The Rot

by Siri Pettersen

  He’d stood here before. With her. The wind had torn at her red hair, tangling it with his own white hair. He’d loved her. And hated her.

  And now he had to risk everything he had. Everything he was.

  For her.

  BASTARD

  Hirka was woken by a searing pain inside her. She gasped for air. Jolted upright in bed and looked down at her stomach. Nothing. It was nothing. She’d just been lying awkwardly and aggravated the wound. It had healed over nicely, but it was still sore.

  Where am I?

  Stockholm. Stefan’s home. At least that was what he’d said. He had keys, but still, something didn’t feel right. Stefan wasn’t the type to have a two-story bed. Much less one that was full of stuffed animals.

  She climbed down to the floor. She had a strange feeling she wasn’t alone. Unfamiliar shapes loomed in the darkness. Things she’d never seen before but that still felt familiar. A pointy tent in one corner. Small animals. A pig. A brown horse on its side. She picked it up. It was smooth to the touch. Fake. She hadn’t seen a live horse since she’d come here. Were all their animals fake? What had happened to them?

  She thought of Vetle, of his wooden horse that had been claimed by the Stryfe back when the tree had fallen. It made her feel sick. Everything she knew was gone.

  Hirka put the horse back on the floor and went into the living room. It felt safe there. Different, but safe. The walls were made of stone, not plastic or glass. Thick beams crossed under the ceiling. Even the rug on the floor was more familiar than other rugs she’d seen. Knotted. Real yarn. The kind of rug that was nice to curl up on. Things smelled right.

  The room was tidy. That was one of the things that revealed Stefan’s lie. He didn’t live here. Stefan didn’t read books. There were no ashtrays here, and the shoes in the hall belonged to a woman and a child.

  Hirka pulled her shirt down over her stomach. It always rode up when she slept. Her underpants used to do that too, but not anymore. Not here. That was one of the few things she actually liked here. Underpants. They fit perfectly, all on their own. And you could get them in light blue, with a bird on them, like the ones she had on. What a world.

  A wall of books divided the living room in two. Hirka peeked into the other half, where Naiell was sleeping. He was lying up in an open loft. On his stomach, on the floor. His back rose and fell as he snored.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Stefan was standing beneath the loft, looking at Naiell’s arm, which hung over the edge. His claws were dangling in front of Stefan’s face, and he was staring at them as if seeing them for the first time. He just stood there, motionless, his white shirt practically glowing in the dark. That and the bandage around his hand. The hand he was holding his gun in.

  Hirka bit her lip. Should she hide? Or say something?

  Stefan didn’t stand a chance against Naiell. And he had to know that. So why try? And why now? Maybe it had all gotten too much for him. Or was it something else?

  Blood.

  Hirka stepped into view. Stefan turned toward her. He instinctively went to hide the gun, but then seemed to realize the stupidity of it, so didn’t bother. Hirka said nothing. Her body was tingling. She knew what it was. Fight or flight. But Svarteld had taught her that was just a feeling. She wasn’t going to give in to it.

  It was nothing more than her body’s response to the realization that she didn’t really know Stefan. He belonged to this world, but he was completely at odds with it. He was running, just like her. He owned next to nothing and had gotten on the last nerves of the people he called friends. Hirka had heard him talking with Nils, and on the phone, always saying it was going to pay off. That he was going to make good on all the favors.

  Stefan put the gun back in its holster, which was shoved in the waistband of his trousers. She turned away from him. Went and sat on the end of the sofa, in front of the window.

  The window stretched from floor to ceiling and looked like a gaping hole in the wall. She felt like she might stumble through it and plummet into the night, toward all the lights below. Streetlights. Cars. Flashing signs. Only the pattering of the rain on the glass made her feel safe, like there was something between her and the outside world. A thin, see-through layer that kept her from falling down among the humans.

  She heard a siren somewhere and tried to filter out everything but the sound of the rain. Stefan hovered by the bookcase for a moment. Then he sat down next to her.

  “Can’t sleep either?” he said.

  He smelled of fresh sweat. It annoyed her that she liked it. She leaned forward so she wouldn’t have to look at him, but he did the same. Leaning back again would have been stupid, so she stayed like that. Next to him. Her with her arms resting on her bare thighs, him with his elbows on his knees.

  “He’s not natural. You do know that, right?” he said quietly.

  Hirka looked at him. “Are you? Am I?” She sounded angrier than she’d meant to. “I mean … he exists. He is, you know?” she said with a little more warmth. “And if he exists, he’s as natural as either of us. If you were going to kill everything that was different, you’d have to start with me. And yourself.”

  “Am I so different?”

  She looked at him again. Stefan Barone. Twice her age. Thirty, maybe. Unshaven. Nervous. And with that little scar that tugged at his lip. But he was handsome. In a way. Warm brown eyes. Short hair with lighter tips and darker roots. He was strong. Even if he was a bit soft around the middle.

  He leaned back and crossed his arms over his stomach. She realized that she’d been staring, so she smiled and looked away.

  He nudged her. “Do you feel that?” He held out his wounded hand and wiggled his fingers. Hirka put her thumb to the bandage. Pressed down carefully. “Feel what?”

  “That. There’s a bump, isn’t there?”

  Hirka didn’t feel a bump. She’d picked out the bits of glass and cleaned the wound herself. She put on her gravest expression. “I think it’s a piece of glass. It’s deep. Near your blood, I think.”

  Stefan went white. She managed to hold back her smile. “Stefan, I think it’s going to reach your heart soon. It might explode.”

  She giggled. He swatted her nose. “You’re fucking hysterical, you are.”

  Sometimes it didn’t feel real, Stefan being a hunter. He stared down at his lap. “Sometimes it’s you or them, you know? You think it’s so easy, but you don’t know what things are like here. It’s kill or be killed. That’s why I have it. Understand?”

  He was talking about the gun. Joking around had set him at ease, so she tried to meet him halfway. “Can I see?” she asked. He gave her a cheeky look, like he was going to say no, but then pulled out the weapon anyway.

  “You did say you wanted a longer knife,” he said. “That’s what this is. If you treat it right.”

  She didn’t answer, deciding to let him take it where he wanted. “This is the dangerous bit,” he continued, pretending not to see her make a face. “If you push this button here, it releases the magazine.” He pushed it and removed part of the handle. “The bullets are in the magazine, see? When you clean it, you need to check that the magazine is empty before you pull the trigger.” His words were as mechanical as the clicks from the gun. He took her hand and wrapped it around the weapon. “You need to have a firm grip. Put your fingers on the top and pull back the slide. When you get it off, like this, you can clean and oil the grooves here.” He put his hand over hers. Raised it, so it looked like they were aiming at the window. Warm hand. Cold steel.

  He lowered his arm again, loosened her grip, and put the gun on the table. “Let’s do this another time,” he mumbled. “It’s not important.”

  She caught his eye again. “What are you going to do if you ever get your hands on him?”

  “I don’t know,” Stefan answered. “If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d have said kill him. But it’s starting to feel … weird.”

  “Weird? Killing someone? That’s a relief.�
� She rolled her eyes.

  “He is your father, isn’t he? That changes things.”

  “No. Father is dead.” She pulled her feet up onto the sofa. They were cold. Stefan put a warm hand on one of them, almost covering it.

  “Do you have a father, Stefan?”

  He pulled her feet onto his lap and started to rub some warmth into them. She wasn’t cold, but she let him do it anyway.

  “I used to have one. He was from Sweden. Fell in love with my mom. She was from Torino. That’s where I grew up.”

  “Is that far from here?”

  “A couple of hours, if Nils is driving.”

  Hirka smiled. This world seemed much bigger than hers, yet somehow smaller at the same time.

  “So where are they now? Your parents?”

  He hesitated for a moment.

  “My mom took off when I was nine. She was dying. She said she’d been given a chance at a new life. So she took it. Left me with Dad. She might as well have left me on the street. Dad was weak. A fool who chased an Italian diva halfway around the world. He gave her everything and still thought she cared, you know?”

  Hirka let him take his time. Let him open up.

  “Well, at least it made Dad take on the only project he ever saw through to the end: a slow death. That’s something. The worst part is that for years I thought she’d left to spare him having to watch her die. But that was before I saw her again. Years later. Still young. Still alive. A woman who’d only had months to live.”

  Hirka’s hand flew to her mouth. “She’s one of them? One of the forgotten?”

  Stefan avoided her gaze. “I walked right past my own mother. She didn’t recognize me. So I followed her. Saw her with a man who scared the crap out of me.”

  He laughed. It sounded painful. “I told the other kids that she’d turned into a vampire. One of the living dead. Let’s just say that didn’t really help my case. I stuck out enough as it was. Half Italian and half Swedish. And with this lip? A teacher told my dad to take me to see a psychologist.”

  “A psycho-what?”

  “A doctor. For your head. The kind you talk to.”

  “A healer?”

  “Whatever you want to call it, it wasn’t my dad’s thing, you know? A son who was losing his mind. It all got too much for him. The drink got him in the end. Just like so many other poor sods. Pretty sick, right? And I was left high and dry. With nothing. The apartment was rented. I could have moved in with a family that hated me, but who wants to do that at the age of fifteen?”

  “I’d have done it when I was fifteen. If I’d had a family.”

  “When you were fifteen? You mean last year?”

  She kicked him. He grabbed her feet and held them still.

  “You should be more careful,” he said playfully. “Even the hunters knew I wasn’t to be messed with. They’d heard what I told people about Mom, so they told me about the sickness. About the rottenness spreading across the world. So then I became one of them. I’ve been hunting and killing those rotting bastards since I was your age, so you should watch yourself.”

  Hirka swallowed. Stefan’s smile faded as he realized what he’d said. “You’re not one of them, Hirka. You may be his, but that doesn’t make you one of them. There’s nothing rotten about you, girl. Nothing. Me, on the other hand …”

  His hand was trembling against her ankle.

  “Why do you never say anything, Hirka? You’ve seen me snap teeth from the jaws of dead men, but you don’t say anything.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Say what you said before, that they’re as natural as the two of us. Say that it’s reprehensible. That they were once people, too. Tell me I’m a bastard.”

  Hirka shrugged. “You’re a bastard.”

  His eyes glistened. He slumped forward until his head was resting on the back of the sofa. She put her arm around him. Ran her thumb over his shoulder. “You’re a bastard, Stefan. They were once people, too. They’re as natural as the two of us. It’s reprehensible.” It was a relief to say it out loud. She made it sound like she was teasing him, but she knew she meant it.

  He groaned and buried his face in the sofa. She looked out at the rain hitting the window. It felt like it was raining inside, too. Tickling her body. Tingling.

  She was suddenly hyperaware that Stefan was a man. Had he been able to, Father would have whispered from Slokna. Warned her. But Father had been wrong. She wasn’t the rot. The rot was passed through the blood of the blind. Not through love. She knew that now.

  Stefan lifted his head and looked at her. The despair grew in his eyes. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to be afraid. That the feeling that something terrible might happen wasn’t real. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing bad.

  He looked like he was in pain, but he moved closer to her all the same. His nose next to hers. His stubble against her cheek. He closed his eyes. She didn’t. His lips found hers. It felt nice, but wrong at the same time. She let him do it. Maybe for the few things he did right. Maybe for all the things he did wrong.

  He wasn’t Rime. But did it matter? That his eyes were brown, not pale gray like Rime’s?

  Wolf eyes.

  She was about to pull away, but he beat her to it. His head dropped to his chest.

  “I am a bastard,” he mumbled into his shirt.

  She let him sit there like that. A spot of red had appeared on the bandage around his hand, and she realized that the closeness wasn’t nearly as harmless as she’d hoped. The rot was spread through blood. Graal’s blood. Could she spread it too? Or was she more human than blindling? She had to know. Had to ask the only people who knew.

  “I know how you can make up for being a bastard,” she said.

  Stefan held his breath. Didn’t ask, just listened.

  “You can take me back to York. To the hospital. I have to see Father Brody,” she lied.

  BLINDCRAFT

  Don’t start something you can’t finish.

  Svarteld’s last words, pumped from the depths of his heart. They ought to have been powerful, ought to have meant something to Rime, but they didn’t. Svarteld had never understood what Rime was made of, what drove him.

  He’d died for nothing.

  Knowing the assembly, Darkdaggar would live on in the pits. Disgraced. Broken. But very much alive. A snake of a man. While Svarteld, strong and fearless …

  Rime walked down the Catgut. It was crowded with people, but he paid them no heed. He bumped into someone but didn’t stop to apologize. None of them mattered. These were the people who had thronged together to gape at Rime and his master, wolfing down strips of dried fish as Svarteld bled out on the tiled floor.

  Wasn’t that why Rime had taken the chair? Wasn’t this what he’d wanted to put a stop to? Good men dying so that bad people could carry on living? What had the duel achieved other than confirming an injustice that was and would remain the same?

  She’ll never forgive me.

  Thinking about what Hirka had sacrificed to secure his place was unbearable. All he could do now was try to ensure he didn’t make any more mistakes. He rubbed the beak in his pocket. His last hope, and the only way to reach her.

  No doubt it would come with a price, but no price was too high. Not anymore.

  He opened the door and squeezed into the crowd at Damayanti’s, pulling his hood up over his head. That was pretty much all he needed to do to avoid being recognized. It was amazing what people didn’t see if they weren’t looking. But today the risk was greater. They’d only just seen him skewer Kolkagga’s master. Svarteld.

  The emptiness yawned in his chest. All the congratulations made it worse. He didn’t want to see people, much less listen to them. He couldn’t stand to be around anyone.

  He went up the stairs and pounded on Damayanti’s door. It was opened by the same young girl as before, the one with the blond ponytail and blind eye. She let him in.

  “Rime-fadri … congratulations on your victory.
I’ve never—”

  “Where is she?”

  “Take a seat. I’ll fetch her.”

  He went in. The girl looked at the swords on his back, and he could tell she was considering saying something about them, but then she clearly decided it was wiser not to. She left, and only a few seconds later Damayanti appeared through the beaded curtain. The rattling of the beads was like laughter.

  He waited for some sort of flirtatious preamble, or a cheeky comment. One of her usual non-invitations. He sincerely hoped she’d try it, so he could have the pleasure of interrupting her. Snapping at her.

  Damayanti came toward him. She was wearing a skirt of clinking chainmail rings. Apart from that she was naked, covered only by body paint that transformed her into a walking skeleton. It was probably some warped way of celebrating the duel.

  She laid a hand on his chest. “It isn’t victory that I see in your eyes,” she whispered.

  He took her hand and pressed the raven beak into it. “Help me.”

  She looked troubled. She turned her back on him. It was painted black, like she was hollow inside. “You want to take the beak?”

  “I know you can do it. And you will help me. I’m not here to ask nicely, or to discuss it. I need to get to her, and you’re going to make it happen. Blindcraft or not.”

  The curtain rattled again. Two young boys swept past along the corridor, arm in arm.

  “Not here,” she said. “Wait for me.”

  She disappeared behind the curtain. Rime stood where he was, concentrating on the weight of his swords. The weight of what he was about to do.

  She soon returned wearing more clothes than he could ever remember seeing her in. Trousers, a tunic, and a fur-lined cloak that concealed her figure. “Come. I’ve told them I won’t be dancing this evening.”