by Cari Z
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it was meant to be.”
“Perhaps the gods are a pair of sadistic bastards, too.”
“It’s possible,” Xian allowed. “Stand up.” Rafael stood slowly, which was the only way he could at the moment. He felt the warm pulse of blood ooze from cuts in his ankles. “Don’t move.” Slender leather tails slid over his right shoulder like a caress, and Rafael bit his lower lip. “I’m going to speak of the gods now, an old story, but still interesting. You may remember it from your childhood.” His voice took on a rhythmic note. “There was Ehvin, made of darkness and mind, and Ehva, lady of light and spirit. Together they made the world, and everything within it. To each thing they gave two sides, light and dark, mind and spirit, and they held it all together with form, or body. Each child was given its allotted time, a measure of light and life before returning to the darkness. Their greatest child was Erran, beautiful and beloved of his parents, a creature of swift action and great spirit and deep thought. He spent his measure of light in triumph, but when the time came for that measure to end, he refused to pass.
“Erran began to consume the spirits of his brethren, taking their light into himself, trying to stave off the darkness. His parents pleaded with him to return to them, but he was glutted on power and light. He ate and ate, and the world began to fall into shadow. His parents, knowing the value of balance, fulfilled their finest son’s wish. Ehva poured her eternal light into him until he was so full he was drowning in it. He called to his father to save him, and Ehvin twisted his son’s mind so that it would fear the light and crave the darkness. Erran burrowed deep into the earth, into the darkest place he could find, but even there the light was too strong. He was too bloated with spirit to die, too bound by darkness to think.
“Erran lay there alone, mad and blind and immortal, for eons. The wounds he dealt himself in his violent fits bled, and the blood welled up through the hole he had dug and spilled out onto the earth, powerful light twisted with darkness. A people found this wellspring and drank of it, and the blood of the demigod gifted them with eternal youth, while at the same time cursing them to live in barren darkness or be destroyed by the light. This is the story of our power, of the acolytes of Erran, blasphemers that cheat the gods by living off the blood of their most beloved son.” Xian’s voice shifted back into a more normal register. “Perhaps the gods are sadists, leaving Erran to suffer for all eternity. Or perhaps they’re simply biding their time.” Suddenly the hood was gone, and Rafael’s vivid mental picture of the demigod’s eternal anguish was splintered by the reality of Xian’s face in front of him. “You’ll have water and two hours’ rest.”
“Why let me rest?” Rafael asked, not really expecting an answer. He wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one. He drank briefly but thirstily from a bowl, then his ankles were released and he was pushed unceremoniously to the ground. The ankle cuffs were rebound to the floor in his new prone position, and the rope was unwound from his torso and legs. Rafael groaned and quivered as each coil and knot was pried out of his flesh, and he was left gasping alone on the cold marble floor as Xian walked out of his line of sight. He wanted to turn to follow his movements, but every twitch was agony after so long bound in one position and his body, more practical than his mind, sent him to sleep instead.
Chapter Seven
Rafael woke up alone in the great chamber a little while later, and when he realized he was alone, his mouth twisted bitterly. So much for his former master’s promise to shadow him. He pushed awkwardly onto his hands and knees, groaning as his shoulders and elbows cracked in complaint. It wasn’t as painful as it might have been, though. The blood he’d taken from his last kill was still aiding him somewhat, then. That and Xian’s baffling allowances were making his experience so far something he could endure. But what was the point? Rafael looked around the room, trying to distract his mind from questions it had no hope of answering.
The round chamber was set up just as he remembered, with curving tables covered with various weapons, ropes and grapples, locks and lockpicks by the wall farthest from the door. The chest beside the tables was probably still filled with alchemical supplies. Attached to the high ceiling were two separate lengths of chain about ten feet apart in the middle of the room. Rafael was kneeling beneath one of them now, attached to the ankle locks that made for a much more inflexible means of restraint when used with the chain. There was a wide metal cross on one wall, cold and rigid and totally unlike Feysal’s. Rafael looked at it and shuddered against the memories that crowded into his mind. He was intimately acquainted with every apparatus in this room.
The physical skills he had learned, the weapons and fighting and tracking and evasion, had all happened in other places, other rooms. This chamber had been more about mental discipline than physical. The ability to subsume pain, to control fear, to retreat behind solid walls of willpower when faced with torture… A spy could be bought. An assassin, once he accepted a contract, had to either fulfill it or die trying. If Rafael had been caught at his work, his mark could have freely destroyed him. It was only fair. The identity of an employer was sacred, though, and not to be given up under any circumstances. Therein lay the rationale for inuring an apprentice to torture.
It had started the very first day he’d been brought here, deliberate discomfort for the sake of toughening him up. For years it didn’t go beyond discomfort, deprivation of sight or sound or several senses at once, being placed in uncomfortable physical positions and told to hold them until Xian returned. He’d climbed the chains dangling above him and held himself in the air for hours, trembling, needing to let go but needing more to make his master proud of him. The few times Rafael had failed to last until Xian’s return had been harrowing for him, not because Xian was angry, but because he was angry at himself. His need to belong to Xian, to keep him happy above all else, had been the driving force in Rafael’s young life.
They hadn’t lived in total isolation. Xian was well known among the High Ones, and many of his contemporaries had had apprentices who he’d encouraged Rafael to get to know. He’d had a few friends, far more acquaintances. Rafael remembered meeting Daeva when he was ten, mere months before Myrtea let him fall to the Lower City rather than give him the First Draught. He hadn’t liked the arrogant youth when he was young, and their reluctant alliance as adults hadn’t done anything to make Daeva more palatable.
Rafael had occasionally wondered, as a child, why Daeva had been forsaken and left to make his way in the Lower City alone rather than been killed. Was it kindness? Years later he realized that the greatest punishment Myrtea could inflict on a man like Daeva, so self-assured, so proud, was to cast him into the mud like the animal she equated him with and leave him to wonder about the cause of his disgrace. It wasn’t kindness, it was cruelty, a cruelty he only fully understood after he himself was exiled from the Upper City. Living as a failure was far more painful than the brief agony of death.
They had both lived, Rafael because his body was too full of his master’s blood to stop healing the wounds he inflicted on himself before Feysal interceded, and Daeva for reasons of his own. Rafael had come full circle, from a childhood spent aching to please Xian to five years of bitter hatred as he hunted down High Ones unmercifully, and now back in bondage to his master.
Rafael cast his eyes up toward the chains. He’d spent long hours hanging there, sometimes full in the air, sometimes with his feet touching the floor. The blood of a High One could heal mortal wounds in large enough quantities, and Xian had taken him to the brink of death several times. The inspection, the instruction, the attention…
He had loved it.
He was sick. Rafael was sick, he had to be. Mentally unstable and emotionally unfit. Perhaps that was why the council had refused to let him take the First Draught and become one of them. Rafael had blossomed under his master’s hands, learning to withstand brutal amounts of punishment while reveling in the fact that, when he was in this room, Xian thought only of him.
All of his attention, all of his care, was focused solely on his apprentice. It didn’t matter that he whipped him bloody, broke bones, raised him up and dropped him the long distance back to the floor. He was doing it for Rafael, to make him better, to make him worthy of being a High One. Rafael would have endured anything for Xian, with pleasure. Sometimes literally.
Eventually, as he learned how to control the pain, his master’s touch began to make him hard. Before that he’d barely noticed his libido, he’d been so exhausted with the constant training. He’d been hanging here, in this exact spot, arching from the snapping kiss of the whip. Xian had stepped close and trailed a finger over the marks on his back, smearing the blood slightly, following the rivulets down over his ass into the crease of his thigh. Rafael hadn’t been able to stop it. His erection had been almost immediate, and desperately hard. There was no way Xian could have missed it, Rafael had been naked. He’d squeezed his eyes shut with shame, sure he was doing something wrong, and sure his master would be angry with him for not controlling his body’s response better. Xian had stepped up close to him, cupped his face in his hands and said softly, “It’s all right.” Then he had kissed his forehead.
Rafael came to understand his body’s responses to pain and pleasure, and how the line blurred for him. Other masters looked forward to taking their turns with him, pleased to elicit a more unusual response from their work. It was far harder for Rafael to take what they did to him than it was with Xian, but he did take it, gritting his teeth and bearing it and occasionally getting hard, because he knew his master wanted him to succeed.
If he hated being the object of others’ attentions, he hated it even more when his master worked with other apprentices. It was tradition, a way to make sure one’s student was well-rounded, but every time he watched the door close on Xian and someone else, Rafael felt such a surge of rage he’d had to run away, put miles of distance between himself and the site of what felt so much like betrayal but wasn’t, couldn’t be.
“Early riser,” Xian noted from by the door. Rafael’s head whipped around. He hadn’t heard him come in. “You look pensive.”
“Just considering my demise,” Rafael replied dryly. He could hardly tell Xian what he’d actually been thinking about. “How will you do it?”
“How will I do what?” Xian began to walk toward him. He was still half-dressed, but now his feet were bare and made no noise against the floor.
“Kill me.” Rafael was genuinely curious. “I’m assuming you’ll behead me, since I’m still capable of some regeneration after my last kill. Unless you want to draw it out, I suppose. I’m sure Myrtea would enjoy that.”
“Not exactly incentive,” Xian agreed. “I’ve not decided yet. You and I still have things to do before we can be free to think about death. How did you choose your marks?”
Ah, now the questioning was beginning. Good. A solid goal, a solid boundary was made clear now—don’t tell Xian anything.
“Did Daeva help you?” his master asked, passing him by and heading for the table. He ran his hands slowly over the equipment there, stroking the smooth handles with a knowing touch. Rafael watched him and shivered. “He was trained to gather intelligence, after all, and you two had ample reason to seek each other out in your exile. Did he pick them, then?” Xian lifted a lash with seven long, slender tails and turned back to Rafael. “What criteria did he use?”
Rafael smirked and stayed silent. Xian shook his head. “Oh, how soon they forget. We’ll have to work on that memory, pet.” He pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves and strode back over to Rafael, bending down and unlocking his ankles. Rafael struck viper fast, whipping his newly freed legs around in a scything kick even as he stood and prepared to run. He was in no condition to fight, but if he could just make it to the door…
A splinter of pain burrowed into his lower right side, expanding to the size of a tree trunk in less than a second. Rafael doubled over with the pain, his mental defenses too sluggish to block it out. The spasms paralyzed him, and all he could do was crouch there, panting like a dog until Xian walked over to him and removed the flechette knife from his side.
“Very pretty, pet,” Xian congratulated him as he hauled him to his feet by his hair. “A lovely attempt, worthy of a knife to the kidney.” He probed the wound for a moment. “It’s healing, but very slowly. I think you’ll need some help keeping your feet.” He pulled Rafael the short distance back to where he had been restrained and lifted his arms to the chain above his head, cuffing him quickly. “Better. Now you can’t fall and hurt yourself again.” He stepped back and looked Rafael over. “But you’re going to bleed all over those pants. If it were certain to be solely us, I’d remove them, but I’d rather not have you on display like that for visitors.”
Xian lifted the lash and brought it down again fast, snapping the tails across Rafael’s chest. The new sensation distracted him from his perforated side, and Rafael gathered himself as best as he could. He was going to be beaten. He could handle that. He could take that. Calm certainty settled into his body and mind, and his defensive walls rose smoothly into place. Xian was watching his face and smiled a little. “Very nice.” Then he brought the lash down again.
He circled Rafael slowly, striking everywhere, sometimes in forceful, concentrated blows and sometimes little more than a tickle. He hit his chest, his back, his flanks and shoulders and ass all in turn, not keeping a rhythm, not letting Rafael anticipate with any success. It was…perfect. Absolutely perfect. Bright beads of blood welled up and rolled down his skin, his breath came heavy and fast, his shoulders ached and his neck popped from the force of the blows, but Rafael felt an internal peace that he hadn’t knows for five years settle into him. Xian asked questions, never heatedly but persistently—about his contacts in the Lower City, about his kills and his work and his connection to Daeva—and Rafael steadfastly refused to speak a word. It felt wonderful, like he was accomplishing something. He was good. He was obedient. He wasn’t a failure, he could still protect his sources.
It went on and on, but he didn’t feel the passage of time. Rafael was sheltered deep inside his own mind, the blissful recipient of his master’s attention and detail. The chime of the doorway cut through his reverie though, and in a moment their solitude was interrupted by Myrtea. Rafael glared at her through glassy eyes. It was possible he had never hated anyone quite as passionately as he hated her at that moment.
She clicked over to them, stopping several feet away to keep her long velvet skirts from soaking up spatters of blood. Xian stepped forward until he was beside Rafael. “Myrtea.”
“Xian.” Her colorless eyes roved appreciatively over Rafael’s glistening form. “I see you’ve continued your appointed task with more vigor. Has he said anything of use?”
Rafael waited with anticipation, the burning all over his body a vivid reminder that he had given Xian nothing to work with. It made the next few moments all the more shocking.
“Daeva does business out of a slaughterhouse in the commercial district, on the west side of the stockyards.” Rafael stiffened with surprise, but Myrtea didn’t seem impressed.
“This we knew already. The council requires more relevant information. Who are his connections in the Upper City?”
“There are many,” Xian said with a shrug. “Whom he uses depends on what sort of information he’s after. He learns the schedules and daily movements of High Ones from the charwomen who haul away our refuse. He’s bought at least one guard in every ten that we hire to protect ourselves when we venture out into the Lower Half. He has a vested interest in making sure your major-domo becomes our human slaves’ next spokesman to the council because he’s been bribing him with rations of our blood for three months.”
Rafael was just as surprised as Myrtea. He hadn’t said any of this. Hell, he hadn’t even known some of this. The charwomen and the guards yes, but not the news about Myrtea’s own household. He briefly entertained the thought that Xian was fabricating that part but aban
doned it. Xian had known. He’d known all of this. He’d asked the questions but he hadn’t needed Rafael to give him anything. He’d only needed Myrtea to think he had.
If she was disturbed by the news, she didn’t show it. Instead she smiled appreciatively. “If the student never surpassed the teacher in some instance, it would be rather a waste of our time to take them, wouldn’t it? Perhaps I underestimated Daeva’s tenacity. It is a lesson for me, and well learned.” She gestured at Rafael. “How goes your own instruction, beloved? You’re into your second day. I would hate to think you were prevaricating with your precious time. His precious, ever-dwindling time.”
Xian smiled faintly. “We’re making progress. Far better for me to be the one to chip away at his defenses, since I helped to build them in the first place.” He brushed one leather-covered finger down Rafael’s cheek, and to his horror Rafael found himself hardening. Gods, no! Not now, not in front of her, not like this! It was useless. His body responded to his master’s touch, his hand tender and intimate against him. If it had been his bare skin instead of gloves, Rafael might have choked on the rush of desire. As it was, it was all he could do not to whimper. “Your concern is noted, however.”
“I heard the stories,” Myrtea mused as she watched Rafael’s reaction. “How he was designed to be used thus. How he craved it. No wonder you didn’t often share him, beloved. He thrives on such efforts.”
“Rafael has always been unique.”
“Clearly.” Myrtea tapped her chin with one long nail, head tilting to the side slightly as she looked at them. “You dislike the idea of your former apprentice being butchered for the amusement of the council tomorrow evening. I may be able to convince them to commute his sentence, and trade in his public execution for a private one at your hands, if you will give him to me to use as I see fit for the remainder of today and tonight.”
