The Tattooed Duchess (A Fire Beneath the Skin Book 2)

by Victor Gischler

  Darshia was already coming out of her chair. She thrust the stiletto into the bodyguard’s gut. His eyes shot wide, breath catching. She pulled out the blade and slammed it home again, hot blood washing over her hand. The bodyguard tumbled to the floor and dropped the brandy bottle. It clattered and rolled under the chair but didn’t break.

  Giffen was fast. Much faster than Darshia had anticipated.

  He grabbed the wrist holding the stiletto and twisted. She screamed and dropped it, and his other open hand came down hard, slapping her across the face. She blinked stars, and they grappled, tangled, and went down.

  He ended up on top of her.

  “Bitch, who are you?” Giffen demanded.

  One of his hands found her throat and squeezed.

  EPISODE SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Darshia’s mouth worked for air, Giffen’s crushing grip on her throat squeezing tighter.

  With one hand Darshia pried at the fingers around her throat. With the other she reached up and raked her nails across Giffen’s face, drawing three red lines. He grunted pain, grabbed her wrist, and pulled the hand from his face.

  She felt her face going hot, lungs begging for air.

  Some part of her registered the altercation going on in the rest of the tavern, furniture being tossed around and broken, shouts of pain and panic and anger.

  She abandoned the hand around her throat. She wouldn’t be able to pry it loose. She felt blindly along the floor. Maybe she could find the dropped stiletto.

  Darshia’s hand closed around something.

  She brought it up hard, striking out, desperate.

  The brandy bottle smashed against the side of Giffen’s head. Glass and brandy rained down on her. Giffen loosened his grip but not enough.

  Darshia still held the broken bottleneck. She jammed the jagged end into Giffen’s hand and twisted. Giffen screamed but held on. Blackness clouded her. She was blind, brandy stinging her eyes. She twisted the broken bottle again, and Giffen’s scream went up an octave.

  And he let go.

  Darshia rolled away, coughing, gagging, trying to suck breath. Every gulp of air was like hot daggers down her throat. She started to crawl away on her belly, aware of Giffen behind her. There was a thump and a thud.

  She felt a strong hand under her arm and began to jerk away.

  “It’s me.” Lubin’s voice. “Let me help you.”

  Darshia let the big bruiser help her up and wiped brandy from her eyes with the back of her hand. She looked around the tavern. The place was a wreck, bodies and broken chairs and overturned tables littering the floor. Some of the tavern patrons on the floor groaned and tried to move. Others would never move again.

  “Giff—” When she tried to talk, pain erupted white-hot in her throat.

  “Don’t worry.” Lubin jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his brother. “Bune’s got Giffen.”

  Bune hoisted Giffen’s limp body over his shoulder. Giffen’s wrists and ankles had been bound with rope, and a bag had been tossed over his head and cinched tight. Stasha Benadicta had ordered that he be taken alive. If Darshia had been given the chance, she would have jammed the broken bottleneck into the man’s throat.

  She stumbled to the door, and Lubin moved to help her. She waved him off.

  Darshia met Carrine and Becca in the courtyard. They were cleaning blood off their swords. Three dead men lay at their feet. None had been allowed to escape. They might have raised an alarm or brought reinforcements. Darshia was just glad the men were dead.

  Bune and Lubin followed her out of the tavern.

  It was late, and the yellow moon was high. Not so many people would be on the streets, but if anyone became too curious about the limp body over Bune’s shoulder, one scowl from the big man would send them scurrying.

  She gently cleared her throat. Her voice slipped out as a scratchy whisper. “Let’s get him back to the castle. Mother already has a cell in the dungeon waiting for him.”

  ***

  They left the forest and crossed the open ground, leading their horses at a walk. They approached the temple slowly, watching and listening. Rina scanned the walls. No guards or movement of any kind, no signs of life.

  Appropriate for the Temple of Death? Or maybe they’ve just abandoned the place.

  They paused at the ruined gates. Rina puffed quietly on a chuma stick as the bishop and Talbun appraised the damage.

  “These are the gates I saw in the dream. What happened?” Hark asked.

  “The Perranese knocked them down with a battering ram,” Rina said.

  “They overran the temple?”

  “No.”

  “You stopped them,” the bishop said. Not a question.

  She sucked on the chuma stick, blew out smoke. “Yes.”

  Hark nodded as if that confirmed something he’d been thinking. “Let’s have a look, then.”

  Hark and his squire passed through the gates and Talbun followed.

  Rina turned to see Brasley hanging back. “Are you coming?”

  “I don’t like this place.”

  “There’s not much to like,” Rina said.

  “Rina, let’s just go.”

  “You know I have business here,” she said. “I struck a bargain with the priest.”

  “Shit on him,” Brasley said. “Break the bargain. What can he do?”

  Rina puffed the chuma stick. What indeed? That’s the big question, isn’t it? The feeling of dread from her nightmare was still a palpable thing in her chest. An intuition from some deep part of her warned against crossing the priest. She’d made the deal willingly, and the evidence was the obscene skeletal hand on her palm. The Hand of Death, Krell had called it.

  Rina didn’t know what would happen if she backed out of the bargain. Something bad? Obviously. But maybe what the priest wanted would be even worse. Choices. Forks in the road. And no turning back once the choices were made.

  She sucked the chuma stick, held the smoke in her lungs a long moment before exhaling.

  “Stay out here if the place make you uncomfortable,” she told Brasley.

  “It’s not just the temple,” Brasley said. “It’s you. It’s what happened to you here.”

  He didn’t need to say more. Armed with the Hand of Death, Rina had slaughtered nearly a hundred men until the ground had become a bog soaked with their blood. She’d been red from head to foot with it by the end, and the look on Brasley’s face had made her sick. In that moment, in his eyes, she’d become something less than human, some dark force reaping all life in her path. He’d been revolted and he’d been afraid.

  “I’m sorry that it was ugly,” Rina said. “I’m sorry you had to see it.”

  “I’m sorry for you.”

  She shifted the chuma stick from one corner of her mouth to the other, turned, and led her horse past the gates.

  When she’d been here last, there’s been a small village, bland unhappy people tending scrawny animals and living in dilapidated shacks. There was no sign of them now, nor any sign of the small garrison of black-armored guards who served the temple.

  But there was an old cook fire that had burned out, the remaining smoke drifting across the compound. Someone had been here recently, maybe was still around. Talbun and the bishop waited for Rina at the bottom of the steps leading up to the temple, a squat stone building topped with a black dome.

  Just as Rina arrived, a bedraggled man emerged from the temple’s arched doorway. A dusty guardsman with dented black armor. He carried an open-faced helm under one arm. “Welcome back to the Temple of Mordis, Duchess Veraiin.”

  Rina recognized the man from her last visit. She’d forgotten his name, had likely never known it. He looked more haggard now, worry lines deep at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

  Rina took a last puff of the chuma stick and flicked away the butt.

  “What happened to the village?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Peasants have a sense of things. Like fo
rest animals fleeing before a storm.”

  “And your men?”

  “Some deserted,” admitted the guard. “Others have escorted the acolytes to other temples. Only High Priest Krell remains . . . and I to serve him.”

  “I want to talk to Krell,” Rina said.

  “He knows. I’ve been sent to fetch you.” The guardsman’s eyes drifted over the others. “Just you alone, I’m afraid, Duchess Veraiin.”

  Talbun moved to stand next to Rina. “I could go with you. He couldn’t do anything about it,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay,” Rina whispered back. “I’ll go.”

  “How long should we wait?” Talbun asked.

  “I don’t know. Do what you think’s best.”

  She handed her horse’s reins to Talbun and climbed the steps. The guardsman ushered her into the temple.

  Once inside, the guardsman gestured her on. “You remember the way, yes?”

  She did.

  Rina proceeded on her own down a hallway of rough stone. Candles in iron sconces lit the way, a mound of wax drippings on the floor beneath each candle indicating long decades. She arrived at a stairway of black stone. The place felt ancient and cold and unfriendly. She climbed the stairs reluctantly, feet leaden.

  The top of the stairs opened into a wide room with a high ceiling. The sudden space had caught her off guard last time. Now she knew she stood underneath the temple’s great dome. She’d been ready for the sight, but it was still impressive. It looked and felt bigger on the inside than it did looking at it outside.

  As before, the inside of the dome didn’t look like a ceiling at all but more like the inky sky at midnight, stars swirling magnificently overhead. The effect was dizzying. A red planet rose from the dome’s horizon and plied a lazy course across the cosmos. She felt small and wondered whether that was one of the intended effects.

  “Good of you to come, Duchess Veraiin,” said a dry, reedy voice. “Welcome again to the Temple of Mordis.”

  She recognized Krell’s voice, turned to look for him.

  High Priest Krell oozed from the shadows as if the darkness itself were spitting him out, and suddenly he stood before her, yellow smile grotesque against chalky skin. Krell was as withered and frail as she remembered. Barefoot. Black robe with the hood up. He seemed more wraith than man, almost as if he were made of smoke.

  But Rina remembered the surprising strength in his hands when he’d grabbed her wrist and had magically drawn the tattoo on her palm, his bony fingers like iron. She shivered.

  “What do I have to do to keep you and your evil eyes out of my dreams?” Rina asked.

  “Not my evil eyes, Duchess,” Krell said. “We all have our own evils to contend with, watched by powers beyond our ken. The world is full of perils seen and unseen, and I am your friend.”

  “You’re no friend of mine.”

  He smiled, an old uncle tolerating a precocious child. “You cannot insult me. I am but an instrument of my master. There is a peculiar freedom in completely giving oneself over to service to a god. All I need to do is tell you what is required of you. I need not understand it. You need not even heed my words. I will still be content knowing I have done as my god has asked of me.”

  “You sound like a puppet.”

  “A faithful servant,” Krell corrected.

  “Tell me what to do to fulfill my part of the bargain,” Rina demanded. “So I can be rid of you and your god.”

  Krell spread his arms. “Then let us consult the cosmos.”

  The stars above swirled and expanded, and the entire world seemed to tilt. The night sky surrounded her, spread out above and beneath her feet. Rina felt dizzy. She felt as if she were floating in space, but she knew her feet were planted on something solid.

  It’s an illusion. I’m still standing on the floor in the temple.

  Or was she?

  Rina was too frightened to move her feet, as if she might lose touch with the floor and float off into space, drift away, lost forever among the stars. A comet streaked by, its tail bright and white. Stars floated below her and above. Krell hovered a few feet from her, perfectly at ease in his surroundings. Only his face seemed strange, eyes suddenly glassy, mouth hanging open.

  He began to chant strange, foreign words in some rhythm that seemed to pulse in time with the surrounding stars. If drifting freely in the vastness of space disturbed him, he didn’t show it.

  A pale light the color of the moon grew in the priest’s eyes.

  “I open myself to the immensity of everything, to the totality of all knowledge of what has been, what is, and what will be.” Krell’s echoing voice filled the room, filled the universe.

  The stars spun around them in a wild blur, planets and moons coming and going. Time itself seemed caught in the maelstrom.

  And in some unexplainable way, Rina understood the high priest’s words. It was as if everything in existence flowed around and through them. Rina felt connected to every person, animal, river, the sky, the mountains, every idea anyone had ever thought. There was nothing to do, no way to control it or make meaning from it. Her only choice was to let herself be overwhelmed, to let the cacophony of everything wash over her.

  “You will be offered two paths, Rina Veraiin,” Krell’s voice echoed. “One north and one south.”

  Forks in the road again. The old man really is a charlatan, isn’t he?

  And yet Rina knew Krell was offering her raw truth. Not simple truth or plain, but a truth straight from where all truths were born. Krell had the sight. His words would need interpretation, but an instinct told Rina they were not lies.

  “The northern path fills the empty palm,” Krell said. “The southern path pays a debt.”

  Rina blinked, and just like that she stood on a solid stone floor again, the stars back in their proper place overhead. She felt hollow, relieved, and let down. She knew with a surprising disappointment she would never be able to describe to anyone else what it felt like to connect to the entire universe. Or maybe it was one of the priest’s parlor tricks, though she thought not.

  Krell looked shrunken and stooped, as if using the sight took much out of him.

  “Heed the words, Duchess Veraiin,” Krell said. “Few people in the world have been the subject of the sight even once, and yet twice has the universe delivered a message to you through me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rina said.

  “That is not my concern.” Krell waved a hand as if dismissing her. “I have passed along the message. The dice are cast. I must trust my efforts have pleased Mordis.”

  “You’re not going to tell me what it means?”

  “I was not told what it means.”

  “Then how the fuck am I supposed to know what to do?” Rina snapped. “I came all the way back to this wretched temple so you could tell me how to clear my debt. The southern path pays a debt. Is that it? Do I go south when given the choice?”

  Krell laughed, the sound of fingernails on stone. “You will pay the debt whichever way you choose, Duchess. I told you. Just coming here has set it into motion. There remains only the manner in which events unfold.”

  “I take it one way is preferable to another.”

  “Without a doubt,” Krell said. “But preferable for whom? For you? For my master? Or for some other god?”

  “What other god are you talking about?”

  “Any of them,” Krell said. “Do not pretend ignorance. One epoch fades as another one is born. The gods vie for dominance, and pawns such as we are caught in the middle. We catch only the vaguest glimpses of their machinations.”

  “You know more than you’re telling me,” Rina said.

  “I have no reason to withhold anything.”

  Rina’s hand fell to the hilt of her rapier. “Maybe a foot of steel through that black lump you call a heart will loosen your tongue.”

  Krell tsked. “How tiresome. You are showing your youth, Duchess. Try showing me how smart you can be.”

  R
ina nibbled her bottom lip, thinking.

  “Okay, you don’t know anything,” Rina said. “But you can guess.”

  Krell shrugged. “Whatever my poor guesses are worth.”

  “What’s in the south?”

  “You can read a map as well as I can, Duchess.”

  She resisted the urge to draw her sword and stab him.

  “You said the northern path fills an empty palm,” Rina said. “That sounds like if I go north I’ll get money or something.”

  “Perhaps,” Krell said. “But consider the Hand of Death.” He gestured to her gloved hand.

  She looked down at her hand, didn’t need to remove the glove to perfectly picture the skeletal tattoo on her palm. Her other palm was blank.

  Empty?

  “A tattoo,” Rina said.

  “For an ink mage, bare skin is a blank canvas, unused,” Krell said. “Empty.”

  Rina considered. Talbun had told her there might be a tattoo in the Great Library of Tul-Agnon to the north. Something that might have to do with the gods. Her interpretations of Weylan’s journal had been as frustratingly vague as Krell’s prophecies.

  The sons of bitches who run the universe could save a lot of time by just being clear about what they want.

  “If there’s a tattoo in the north, then where is it? What does it do?” Rina asked. “Why is it important?”

  Krell shook his head. “I have told you all I can. Go now, Rina Veraiin. Go and make your choices.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Empress Mee Hra’Lito sat cross-legged on the elevated platform in the grand throne room. The advisor kneeling before her looked pained to delivery his litany of bad news, but such was his lot.

  “The outlying provinces continue to report rumblings of insurrection,” reported the advisor.

  The empress pinned him with a cold look. “Define rumblings.”

  “The food shortages have aggravated an already volatile situation,” the advisor said. “But at the moment, local militias still maintain order.”

  Local militias were not as able as imperial troops. Under other circumstances, Mee would have sent a company of imperial troops to squash any uprising, but every last warrior was currently on one of ten thousand ships crossing the sea to Helva.