Bounty

by Harper Alexander

  So he clung to the image of Princess Catris, letting it possess him, letting her hold onto him. And as the leeches drained him, weakening him and sending him under again, he dreamed deeper, more pleasant dreams of her.

  24: Recklessness

  It took him a moment, after his eyelids fluttered slowly open, to realize that he was no longer surrounded by the cold, lifeless stone of the alley he had died in – and that he wasn’t in the realms of the gods, either. A lavish bedchamber came slowly into focus around him, decorated exotically in blacks and greens and maroons, and swamped with rugs and wall hangings. Gold, roping tassel-work draped around the chamber, and there was a presence of light that made him cast his eyes about for the windows it was surely attributed to, only to find solid walls that left him wondering. Mastodon’s strong incense laced the air of the still room, no doubt absorbed by now into the very souls of the carpets and tapestries and bedclothes.

  So he wasn’t dead. Was this Mastodon’s room? Admittedly, the solid blackness of the bedclothes and canopy was a little deathly encompassing him, and, still disoriented, he blinked at the tomblike paradox immediately surrounding him, wanting to make sure. The rest of the chamber remained tuned to his focus, though, and for the first time he dared to hope that something had actually saved him back there in the alley.

  A door clicked open, and a silent figure moved into the room. Struggling to lift his head as his stiff neck protested, Godren strained to see who had entered. His skull felt like it was made of lead, though, and the muscles in his neck felt like stone, preventing him from succeeding except for the barest glimpse before his head fell back on the pillow. The effort felt like it should have left him trembling, but his muscles were just too stony to turn to water. Feeling heavy, he lay there like a weighty statue, a burden unto himself, thinking that surely he was going to leave a deep impression in the expensive mattress beneath him.

  A dark-skinned servant appeared next to the bed, setting a tray on the nightstand before she turned her eyes to the occupant of the canopy’s black shadows. She didn’t say anything – just looked at him, directly and penetratingly, and then took her leave.

  What had she brought? Godren’s curiosity frustrated him as he couldn’t find the means to satisfy it, weighed down and restricted to the impression he made in the mattress. After a moment he caught a whiff of spicy sustenance, which only taunted him more as he lay there immobile, unable to get to it. Were they just going to leave him there, unknowing about his condition? He would go mad.

  A few moments later, though, Mastodon came in. She looked out of place in this setting, even though it was her room; he was so used to only seeing her behind her desk. Even more awkward to behold, he realized, must be him; in her bed.

  “Welcome back, Godren,” Mastodon said, sitting calmly by the bed. She glanced at the food tray her servant had left on the nightstand. “Do you find you’re unable to fend for yourself?”

  Wondering if he should trust himself to try to talk, Godren swallowed first. His tongue was thick and unmanageable, but he forced it into submission and managed a shallow swallow. Tediously, he formed his first word; “Yes.” It was a bit slurred, and came out a bit like a croak, but it came out. That was something.

  “Well you can speak, at least. I’ll have to have Lea nurse you back to health. Seth would help too, I’m sure. He’s positively beside himself.”

  As he worked so hard to bring words to his stiff lips, Godren suddenly realized he didn’t know what was safe to say and so discontinued his effort. What did you say to someone when you didn’t know if she felt similarly murderous about the treachery that had gotten you almost killed in the first place? The fact that he was still here, with a tentative future of being nursed back to health, was comforting – but did he trust that? She could easily be nursing him back to health only to break him anew and really kill him the second time. Something ironic and ruthless like that would be just like her. How was he supposed to know what she knew? And how she felt about it?

  And where was Ossen? There had undoubtedly been significant transpirations between significant figures during his absence, and it frustrated and uneased him to be so thoroughly out of the loop. How carefully should he tread? He knew he shouldn’t expect any coddling just because he was recovering from a brutal brush with death, lest he get a rude smack of further, vicious punishment in the face, or some such form of retaliation for the treacherous inconvenience he had caused – but the thought of playing his survival games, continuing to be crafty and discretional, was utterly exhausting in this state.

  “You are lucky, you know,” Mastodon told him.

  Am I? Godren wondered shrewdly, still on the same train of thought and immediately applying caution to everything that came out of her mouth – but he let her continue;

  “I daresay you wouldn’t have had a chance if you hadn’t shot yourself before. I believe the first time might have resulted in a small amount of immunity to the poison. Thanks to that, you had just enough of an edge to respond to the treatment Evantralis saved you with.”

  Evantralis…she must mean the dark woman with the leeches. So his dream hadn’t been a dream. It had been real – or at least, parts of it had. He didn’t know how far he could trust his awareness during that bleak phase.

  “She had…” Godren managed, finding his faulty voice and painstakingly forcing it out, “…leeches.” There. At least he was coherent, however sluggish.

  “Yes. She had to bleed you near death to drain a lethal dose of the poison – a substantial risk, but necessary if you wanted any chance at all.”

  “But…why leech–” His unruly tongue balked in his throat and cut him off, and he tried to swallow to get it untangled, but didn’t try to finish his sentence.

  “A sacrifice of loyalty to me,” Mastodon explained. “Similar to how you signed a contract in blood, my servants offer their blood to me on a daily basis, surrendering control so I may use them for my causes. Typically, they keep only one pet each, but Evantralis is a bit of a special case; there is a shadow of magic in her blood, making it sweeter, and the leeches like that. They flock to her. Was the experience you had with them unpleasant? No, probably not; I don’t imagine you felt much at the time, did you?”

  Godren’s silence served as confirmation enough, and Mastodon went on;

  “You should be aware that I expect you to overcome the ailments that impede your body and regain full aptitude for the things I’ve charged you with, or I will have no further use for you. You would do a service to yourself by making swift, thorough progress.”

  Having it confirmed that he wasn’t going to get a break, Godren considered the chance she offered him. There was not much leeway granted in her expectations.

  “You can thank Evantralis that you’re alive at all. I’m not going to coddle you, but I imagine you know that. Your recovery is up to you, along with your fate. Don’t disappoint me, Godren. You have so much potential; I would hate to see it prematurely snuffed.”

  With that, Mastodon rose to see herself out. “I’ll send someone to help you eat. Please try not to drool on my mattress – blood on my carpet is where I draw the line.”

  Left to himself, starving, numb, and empty with bleak despair, Godren tried not to fear for his future. He told himself now was all that mattered, but ‘now’ was not so very full of encouragement. If now was all that mattered, he reconsidered in hindsight, he surely did not have much to be optimistic about.

  It wasn’t long before Seth burst through the door. Anxious stress creased his sleep-deprived face. Striding to the bed, he sat heavily on the edge of the chair Mastodon had occupied, eyes searching Godren.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded in concern. “They wouldn’t tell me anything.” Running his fingers through his hair, he seemed to change his mind; “No, that’s not true. Mastodon told me all manner of things. She actually very patiently answered all of my demanding harassment. But I want to hear it from you. Do you hurt anywhere? I’m told y
ou don’t, but I think they’re all a little unfair in their assumptions if they’re going to take it upon themselves to deny pain when it’s you that’s been shot nearly to death.”

  There was no question about it; Seth was frantic. Godren waited out his rambling before trying to answer, knowing he didn’t stand a chance of getting a word in edgewise, especially when his own speech was so hesitant in response when he tried to summon it up.

  “I don’t…hurt, Seth.”

  That silenced Seth finally, and he looked at Godren in concern, not really reassured. “You don’t…feel, do you?” he asked grimly.

  Godren blinked. “No.”

  Glancing at the tray on the nightstand, Seth looked quizzically at Godren. “Do you want help with that?”

  Managing a stiff nod, Godren waited as Seth readied the food and began spooning it into his mouth. It was painstaking work, but Seth was mortally patient with him. “I’m not about to let any of them touch you right now,” he said. “Not even to make you better. My trust has just taken a lethal shot to the heart, I’m afraid, and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  To Godren’s dismay, he could not taste the food. It had been torture enough smelling it and then not being able to reach it, but to finally get a hold of it only to find it did nothing for him… He could have cried. Sinking into the numbness that overwhelmingly engulfed him was the only thing that saved him that despondency. He was alive. He should be thankful for that. But what good was it when you were no better than a dead man who was breathing? A dead man who could see? What good was living, he wondered, if you didn’t feel alive? As Seth nursed him back toward health, he looked around the room. “Well this is ostentatious, isn’t it?” he remarked, not expecting a reply. “I always expected she kept something elaborate behind closed doors, but I didn’t quite predict this. What’s the nationality of the theme? East Derridean?” He talked on about this and that, keeping Godren occupied and taking his mind off his restricting ailments. What it couldn’t take his mind off, though, ultimately, was Ossen.

  “Seth,” he said, catching his friend’s attention. Exhausted from the effort of eating, his next words were a struggle, but he drew up the energy and forced them out. “Where’s Ossen?”

  Seth stopped blinking, and his face hardened. He looked like he wanted to spit, and spit fire. A muscle in his jaw tensed, and he looked bitterly away for a moment. “Sulking,” he said through gritted teeth. “He doesn’t…take getting reprimanded very well. And yes, that’s all he got for what he did. A scolding. Actually, to be honest he seemed mostly indifferent through the lecture, the cur. But I thought he got off too easily, so I hit him. That’s why he’s really sulking, Godren, I know it – I hit him hard. Gods, I could have done so much more to him…if Bastin hadn’t pulled me off, I would have split his skull – and Mastodon wouldn’t have stopped me, either. I’m afraid he got off with no worse than a black eye – but it’s a black eye that would make you proud if you saw it.”

  Spent from his waking exertions, Godren refused the last bit of tasteless food and settled back into himself. Seth took a hint and left off rambling, though he didn’t leave the room, and soon Godren sank back into a hopelessly un-fitful sleep.

  *

  For a few days, there was no sign of improvement. Godren’s limbs remained deadened and unresponsive, failing him. He would work himself into a sweat just laying there trying to force the barest movement out of different things. Labored breathing was the hardest thing of all to recover from; as it intensified, his heavy chest weighed down his lungs and demanded more effort, and it took a conscious effort of will to start calming his body.

  Under Seth’s close, untrusting scrutiny, Lea came to silently try her hand at working the stiffness out of Godren’s muscles, putting him through stretching routines and deep-pressure massages. Finally, it had some affect, and the smallest ability returned to him. His fingers twitched on command, and he could engage the rest of his muscles whether they offered their strength and support or not.

  That was all it took for Mastodon to kick him out of the luxury of her bedchamber and send him back to the unsympathetic accommodations of his own courtyard, and he spent a miserable few days slumped up against the unforgiving wall in the corner, eager to persevere through the limitations and discomforts of his condition and regain his normal functions.

  Lea bled him once or twice more with a single leech she removed from beneath her collar, and the practice left him drained and slightly nauseous but seemed like it might be doing some good when the little creature showed signs of successfully retracting more poison by dropping dead. At that point Mastodon pulled down a jar of leeches from a shelf and distributed a replacement to Lea before leaving the whole thing with Godren to use as he saw fit. Distastefully, he obliged – but made sure the poisoned creatures were thoroughly destroyed after use so Mastodon would not get a hold of any more of his blood.

  Slowly, movement returned to him. He exhausted himself forcing it out, putting himself through strenuous exercises to gain the smallest amount of progress. He knew Mastodon’s expectations, and knew he was at risk of being declared incompetent and then wordlessly eliminated as his failing potential named him nothing more than an ailing figure who knew too much. They would come for him where he sat paralyzed in his corner, when Seth was away, and he would hardly be able to protest as they closed in, seized him without resistance, and un-hesitantly ran a blade across his throat. He would have no say, would be completely helpless and at the mercy of pitiless men following pitiless orders. What troubled him most about that scenario was imagining Seth when he came back and found him dead – if they let him get that far before killing him too.

  Despair for that fate grew in his numb stomach as uneventful time dragged on. He tried not to let it overcome him, focusing on his recovery. Seth stood guard with all the fierce loyalty in the world, while Godren fought his own body for his life. If only you knew, he thought at himself. If only you knew your slow progress was going to end up being the death of you, I daresay you’d speed it up a bit.

  Finally, when Seth had his back turned one day, Godren channeled his will into his reluctant muscles, called on his deepest reserves of energy, and stood. Struggling to his feet, quivering with the effort, he used the wall for support and hunched wretchedly for balance, but he stood.

  Seth turned around, hearing the movement. He looked at Godren, his appraisal blank at that point, weary out of his faithful mind. But the length of time his eyes stayed staring proved how notable the progress registered as, and then relief dawned in his tired gaze. “Welcome back,” he said gravely.

  *

  The doors to Mastodon’s study were thrust open. Conversation inside cut off, and everyone looked up to regard the driving force of the intrusion. All eyes landed on Godren, framed in the threshold. Ossen stood before Mastodon’s desk, his eyes cast over his shoulder at the interruption, words visibly dying on his lips.

  “Well – hello, Godren,” Mastodon greeted cordially. “Ossen was just persuading me to declare you fruitless and issue the order to have you taken care of.”

  He would.

  Saying nothing, Godren’s hard gaze drove Ossen to vacate the position he occupied before Mastodon’s desk – and therefore in Godren’s path – as Godren moved into the room. His limbs felt like lead, his muscles watery and unpredictable, but he dragged them the direction he wanted to go and forced his conduct into submission, appearing to possess much more control than he actually did. An illusion of strength surrounded him, exhausting to maintain but worth its weight in gold as he watched the surprised respect that surfaced in his company’s eyes. Ossen moved to the edge of the desk as Godren took up the central position of honor.

  “Where do we stand?” Godren asked straight out, wanting an update. He was astutely aware of Ossen’s discomfort where he had resigned himself to the sidelines; it radiated from him in waves at the edges of Godren’s peripheral vision.

  A smug twinge of amusement was
evident in the arch of Mastodon’s brow as she regarded him. “Alice was spotted again. Closer, this time. There’s also a strange unrest breaking out on the undercurrents of the social order of the city – a result of our little trick turning hunters against each other, I think. Where do you stand?” she wanted to know, her brow arching a little higher.

  “Ready to condemn anything you point me at,” he replied, meaning it. If she wanted him to bounce swiftly back, he had to give her that – and more, if he wanted an edge. And he had found, in his numbness, the potential tendency to indulge in recklessness, to embrace an impulsive side of himself and dive in fearless of the outcome – something that, while it subtly alarmed him, presented him with an edge he knew Mastodon would appreciate. It was full of risk, yes, but he realized he might very well become indispensable by it.

  “Rearing to go,” Mastodon observed. “I like that. I’m glad to see your recovery is coming along so successfully. We were worried, for a time, that you were not going to bounce back.”