by K. E. Blaski
“I’ll find you. And in a normal body, with normal skin, I can have a normal life. You’ll run from Noble then, and we both can finally be free. Like we’ve always wanted. It’s what you want, in exchange for saving my soul.” She returned her gaze to Durand, her shoulders stiff, her hands gripping her elbows.
“Yes.” He breathed deep, tension releasing its grip. Free. She’d said the word he’d rehearsed for her, the feelings he’d wished for her to speak all along. “That’s the plan.”
DAMEN
CHAPTER TWO
ARGATHE
Damen watched Nyima wrap herself in a heavy robe. She covered her head with the attached hood and dropped the cloth mask over her face. Now she could walk through the castle halls without causing distress.
She peeked out from behind her coverings. The corners of her eyes crinkled and gave away the grin beneath. “Thank you.”
Damen smiled back. Nyima’s relief filled him with strength. He knew he was doing the right thing. “I’ll follow and make sure you arrive safely in your room.”
A pair of armor-clad, leather-gloved soldiers waited at their post at the bottom of the North Tower. They gave Nyima a wide berth as they escorted her to the West Corridor, while Damen trailed behind. When they arrived at her room, one soldier held her door open with his face turned away as she disappeared inside.
Once the door was closed behind her, he turned to Damen. “Hey, Damen—want to see something special? Come here, boy, take a look at what I got here for you.” The soldier smirked. The other stifled a snicker behind his hand.
He couldn’t get away; they blocked his path. Ignoring them was not an option. The taller one—maybe his name was Februus, but all the soldiers looked alike to him: cropped hair, thick necks, silver cheeks, and sour dispositions—unrolled a small parchment in front of Damen’s face. A crude charcoal sketch of a very naked, very buxom woman stared back at him with her legs splayed apart, her hands on her thighs.
Pushing the picture aside, Damen ducked around the two laughing soldiers, but Februus called after him, not giving up. “Don’t take it so hard, Tovar, just trying to get a rise out of you!” They clapped each other’s backs and fell into a fit of snorts.
Damen left them behind. He could take the teasing—encouraged it, even. No one in the castle was aware of the inhibitor he took daily in order to be around Nyima. The castle gossips suspected he was . . . impaired, incapable of arousal. The notion was far from true. Without the inhibitor, he could be just as lustful as any seventeen-year-old. But the rumors served him, and he was allowed to see Nyima and take her to and from the North Tower.
When he’d first arrived at the castle, Noble had been skeptical of Damen’s compulsion to tell the truth. He’d never met a Tovar. Surrounded by liars all his life, Noble had wanted proof when Damen had told him he wasn’t attracted to Nyima—or to anyone, male or female.
So Noble had tested him endlessly and with great humor. Damen would turn in for the night to find any number of naked servants—of every conceivable combination of gender, age, and size—tucked into his bed or servicing each other on the floor. With inhibitor in his system, it was easy to throw a robe or blanket around them and usher them out. Although sending the feisty Lasca on her way was always a challenge. But always they’d leave, and this would continue to fuel the stories and jokes about the lifeless Tovar in Noble’s employ.
He considered himself lucky that Noble had never suspected a potion was shutting down his desires. If Noble did suspect, he’d ask, and then Damen would have to tell him about the inhibitor. Thank Aprica, Noble hadn’t just castrated him, like he had some of the castle staff. But now Noble believed in Damen’s abilities, and too many of the “altered” victims died after the procedure anyway. Noble wouldn’t risk losing his truthsayer.
Damen had become valuable. A position he’d never imagined he’d hold. A power he now would use to save Nyima.
Through the gaping castle entranceway, Damen trotted across the stone courtyard. He paused at the gate and bowed, offering a quick protection prayer to Aprica, before setting foot in the city.
Noble’s city. Burned and beaten down, artists and vendors driven into the shadows. The music and vitality Damen remembered as a child were now crushed like bones beneath soldiers’ feet. The life sucked from the city’s veins. Now all the city was good for was sending its citizens to mine Urion from the seabeds for Noble’s stores.
The rémy boats had traded in their hooks and nets for suction tubes, pumping Urion-laced ocean debris into their holds and dumping it on the shore. Damen avoided the beach as much as he could. Wages depended on volume, so children as young as five worked next to their parents, sifting tiny granules of Urion from the sand, their small bodies ravaged from the effects of Urion poisoning. He couldn’t bear to watch.
Whether journeying along the coastline or weaving through the maze of city streets, Durand had been reduced to a depressing obstacle between the castle and the open countryside beyond.
Damen attempted to pass unnoticed in the alleyways, but several were blocked with festering piles of garbage, forcing him to travel out in the open. It was hours before curfew, and the few taverns that could still afford a license kept the off-duty soldiers busy. Patrons overflowed into the streets.
Raucous drunks spilled from a nearby doorway, and he crossed to the other side to avoid them. The gold Tovar symbol sewed to the front of his brown robes made him an easy target. The last thing he needed was to get dragged into a brawl, or have some idiot decide Damen was a plaything for a game of “Test the Truthsayer.”
There was a time when he would’ve liked to have wasted away a night in a tavern with a group of friends, met a soft girl, taken her to bed, and awoken with a throbbing headache and his newly betrothed’s father’s sword at his throat. But he knew better. How could he settle down and get married? How could a Tovar ever have a real relationship? The little lies that keep lovers entwined were beyond his grasp. No one truly wants an honest partner.
Even Noble kept his real secrets to himself. He commanded Damen to leave the council room whenever military maneuvers or political strategies were discussed, and only called him back when he suspected someone was lying.
Which was fine with Damen; he didn’t want to know the intricacies of Noble’s grip on the world. The more he knew, the less freedom he’d have, because Noble wouldn’t risk Damen spilling his strategies to anyone who asked. And the last thing Damen wanted was to be castle-bound like Nyima. His plan’s success relied upon his ability to come and go as he pleased.
Without incident, he exited Durand through the great arch. The soot-covered stones towered at least five kinmen above him. The gate had been ripped from its hinges and never replaced. This entrance didn’t need bars or guards. Noble Tortare was master of the twelve spired cities, hundreds of country villages, and the endless Sea of Undine. Reunification was the justification for his campaign of terror, and now his reach extended farther than that of any Noble before him. Some said he ruled right up to where the land fell into the sky.
Damen thought he’d like to go to the edge of the world to see if it was true, but all who ventured that far never came back to tell the tale. Once he saved Nyima and she was safe in Casilda, he’d have to go somewhere beyond Noble’s reach, as he had no doubt Noble would offer an attractive reward to anyone who’d return his Tovar to him. Maybe the reason no one ever came back from the edge was because they were finally free. Maybe Damen would just have to journey through the Hrazad mountain passage of Telerune and see for himself.
Both moons hid behind new clouds, and Damen waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark. Once he could focus on the gravel road that led to the village of Elliot, he quickly put distance between himself and Durand, vanishing into the dark countryside.
Out here, the air was thick with fragrant olinda instead of sea spray, but the breezes had stopped. The heat pressed against his body. Nothing moved. Even the buzzing kasen fell still. Only the sound of
Damen’s rhythmic breaths and the scrape of hardened dirt beneath his sandals broke the silence. It was difficult to believe that this road had once been littered with broken corpses left behind by Noble’s war. Now the bodies were buried deep beneath the red soil feeding the fields, their ghostly cries mere whispers on the wind. Tonight, their whispers were still.
He passed a cartman loaded with langor, his scrappy dog ducking and dodging between the wheels, and later, a woman wrestling with a giant bos, trying to lead him back in the direction of Durand, probably for market. Damen nodded, but neither paid him any mind. That was just as well. Argathe was expecting him and he was late.
The effort from running released the castle’s burdens from his heart and lungs. The knots in the muscles of his legs and shoulders dissolved, and he picked up his pace. Out here, he could almost forget he was a Tovar and pretend instead that he was just a normal youth heading home after a long day’s work.
An hour’s run past the farmlands brought him to the cottage where he’d grown up. The night shadows couldn’t hide the neglect. A broken shutter banged a gloomy refrain against peeling paint and crumbling stone. The night couldn’t hide the smell either: a nauseating mixture of chemicals, decay, and . . . burnt hair? What was the woman brewing up this time?
He rapped on the greenwood door, the last piece of his family’s home that bore any resemblance to his memories. The lines carved into the frame marked his physical growth and the passage of time. At least, up until his mother had become too distracted to keep track, and then too crazy to care. He pressed his fingers into the topmost mark, which now came to the center of his chest.
“Argathe,” he called. “Open up, it’s Damen.”
Muttering, shuffling, and a moment later the door creaked open wide enough for him to squeeze through.
A lively fire only encouraged the ghoulish shadows to dance against the grime-ridden walls. “Your stink is outside,” he said to the figure hunched over the hearth.
“Can’t be helped,” she whispered back hoarsely, her voice nothing like what he remembered from when he was a child.
A flap of skin dangled where once he could see her chin. Over the years, as her skills had improved, the woman who’d raised him had gradually faded; she’d become less mother and more monster. She might’ve been lovely once, but now pink flesh peeked through her cracked skin like some overripe fruit, and scar tissue sealed one of her eyes shut: damage from the hundreds of chemical reactions she’d produced.
He’d escaped four years ago to stay with the Priests of Tovar, and to live closer to Nyima—but also because he couldn’t bear to witness his mother’s transformation. Argathe had let him go without a fight, too caught up in her quest for knowledge and power to care. Their latest shared goal was the only reason they tolerated each other, although their motivations couldn’t have been more different. He’d save Nyima, and Argathe would stretch the boundaries of dark science and make a name for herself. A pact made out of necessity rather than forged from any family bonds.
“You spent too much time with her,” she growled while poking at the fire. Instead of flaring up, the fire reduced to glowing embers as she prodded at it. Some spell she created reversing the natural order, undoubtedly. “We should have started earlier.”
He didn’t argue. He was an extension of her hands tonight, at her disposal. Whatever she needed from him to succeed, he’d do.
“Is she still colored?” The tip of Argathe’s tongue scraped against chapped lips.
She always did enjoy baiting him with words chosen for their vulgarity. But he would not be lured into a fight tonight. “Of course she is.”
“Don’t be surly. I need to make sure you’re resisting temptation. You didn’t take the inhibitor with you tonight.”
“No, I didn’t, and it’s none of your business.”
“Wrong!” she screeched. “You will not spoil this for me. Once I complete the exchange, I’ll be Master of the Order, the one who accomplished what the rest of them only dreamed. Make yourself useful. Get the chronometer. Back of the toolshed.” She tossed some black powder across the embers and they crackled and sizzled. “Behind the cages.” She winked her one good eye.
The cages. He hoped they were empty this time, their contents disposed of in fire and ash. He’d never understood why she kept the creatures as long as she did. A reminder of past failures, perhaps. If it were up to him, he’d put them out of their misery, learn from the mistake, and move on.
“Go, boy. Dawdling won’t save your precious princess.”
Damen stepped back outside and sniffed the air. The stench from the cabin hadn’t made it into the yard, so he inhaled, freeing himself. Even without the moonlight, he easily found his way to the toolshed. He knew this place well: every hiding spot, every tree, every boulder had been burned into his memory. Unlike the cabin, the yard and surrounding woods could transport him to the past, make him yearn for the time when his mother had gardened and hung clothes out to dry while he played underfoot listening to her sing. But what good was dwelling in the past? No good, that’s what. Reminiscing only made him roil with guilt for hating her now. If only he hadn’t turned his father over to Noble’s soldiers, everything would be different.
“If I tell her I’m sorry every day of my life, it still won’t be enough. Nothing will bring you back, Father. Nothing will bring her back.” The wind picked up suddenly and rustled the tree leaves, as if accepting his confession.
The shed beckoned him back to the real world, its clapboards scorched from some recent fire. In the world of dark science, mixing, testing, and blowing things up replaced gardening and singing.
The lantern hung from a peg outside the door. “Wake up,” he said. He removed the glass box and shook it until the Cidrans trapped inside popped to life. “Lazy souls.” The Cidrans in the castle lanterns were much better behaved. “You should brighten as soon as you see someone coming.” He gave them one more shake.
Within the shed, the cages weren’t empty. Wet, slippery sounds came from the one on the left. From the other two cages, quiet eyes reflected the glow from the lantern.
He held out the light to get a closer look—and gasped. He should’ve known better. When a soul tears from the body and the new one misaligns, the outcome is physical: misplaced organs and body parts. Hares once covered in soft fur became gelatinous blobs of pink tissue, teeth, and nails. Humans became . . . well, indescribable.
The large creature in the cage against the wall had probably once been some drunk, homeless old man Argathe had lured in with the promise of more drink. But under her hands, he’d been changed into a twisting, oozing mass of flesh. Flipped inside out. As for whatever life forms originated in cages two and three, they were now unrecognizable. Their smell was familiar, though: the iron smell of blood, and underneath, something rancid.
Damen shuddered. “Why she keeps you, I’ll never know.”
The small chronometer rested on the floor, propped against the back wall. As he stepped toward it, something encircled and tightened around his ankle. The lantern slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor, illuminating a rope-like appendage lashed around his foot. “For Aprica’s sake, let go of me!”
A voice like stone against stone. The human-sized creature. “Murrr . . .”
“You’re trying to speak?”
“Muurr see . . .”
“Let go. Let go!” Damen struggled against the creature’s grip, horrified by the realization that the caged beast could communicate. If it could communicate, then . . . oh, dear Aprica, it wasn’t really an it.
“Mur see,” the creature repeated—and Damen understood. He knew what this person wanted.
“You want mercy? Then, please. Let me go.” The pressure around his ankle released.
“Puh lee zh,” it choked out.
“Okay, okay. Let me get what I came for. I’ll come back and . . . I’ll try to help.” He picked up the lantern. Was that pleading in the eyes from cages two and three, as well
? “And you too. I’ll come back and help everyone.” He scooped up the chronometer into his shaking hands and hurried out of the shed, away from those dark, moist eyes.
“What took you so long? Every moment you waste—”
He threw the chronometer on the table and, without a word, grabbed the tongs out of her hands.
“What are you doing, boy?”
He pulled an ember from the fire and swung it at her. “What you should have done days ago. They’re aware. And they’re in pain. It’s cruel keeping them alive. You—are cruel.”
“You’re soft, Damen. Always have been. Too soft.”
He left her spreading star charts across the table, mumbling to the chronometer clutched in her hand.
The moisture in the air hadn’t dampened the kindling, so the firepit caught easily, and within a few minutes a bonfire towered in the sky. One by one, he dragged the cages from the toolshed. After he’d lined them in a row like soldiers, he sat on the edge of a rock. Postponing the horror of what he must do next, he simply watched the fire for a while, rubbing his temples. Finally he addressed the creatures.
“Look, I’d prefer to put a stick through your brain or something just as quick. It’d be less painful, ’cause you look like you’ve already had enough pain. But since I don’t know where your brain is, and bashing you with a rock could take a while, it’ll have to be the fire.” His voice choked in his throat. If only there was another way. “If you don’t want to die this way, speak now, or rap on the bars, or blink or something.”
The cages remained quiet.
“For Aprica’s sake, don’t you have anything to say?”
Nothing but the crackle of flames and the drone of the Cidrans inside the lamp. He clenched the fabric of his robes in his hands, trying to control the tremble in his hands that threatened to send his whole body into a convulsion. He inhaled deeply and buried his dread deep inside himself.
