by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 20
“Dead, Holiness?” Abass said, glancing down at Maq’s hand on his arm. “You’ll pardon my saying, Holiness, but you seem to be overlooking something.” At Maq’s sharp glance, Abass cursed himself. Father take you, Scribe, he thought, for getting me to talk like this.
Eyl let out a laugh, though. The stout man slumped onto a bench near the rail. “He’s got you there, Maq. You don’t make much of a leader if you can’t tell the difference between alive and dead.”
Maq’s expression smoothed, but he did not release Abass’s arm. “You’re injured,” he said. “Badly.”
Abass shrugged.
“He wasn’t much better when he just about put an end to me,” Eyl said. “The boy’s got guts. Can barely walk, but he stood up to the wights as well as can be expected.”
“You’ll tell me all about it,” Maq said.
“In the morning, aye,” Eyl said. “I’m crashing hard.”
“Now,” Maq said. Eyl grimaced, but he sat up and nodded.
“Take him to a room,” Maq said to the man at the bottom of the stairs. “Make sure he’s comfortable—food, a bath, clothes.”
“This your new sark?” the one-eyd man asked. His voice was as angry as his expression
Maq did not answer. He turned without another word and reentered his room, making one sharp motion for Eyl to follow.
“You need a bath,” the one-eyed man said. “You’ll not have clothes or a bed until after.”
Abass examined the house. There were other ways out—no house was ever as tightly kept as the owners liked to think. He was exhausted, though, and in pain. With a grimace and a shrug, Abass started down the stairs.
“Well, if you’re going to bathe me, I should at least know your name,” he said. Abass smiled at the angry cast to the man’s face.
“Father’s glory, I ought to kill you right now. Don’t matter what Maq says, no need for another sark around here. Slow me down enough as it is.”
“Well, I suppose,” Abass said, trying to mask his pleasure at irritating the other man. “ that if you’re not going to feed me or bed me until after you bathe me, you probably should wait on the killing as well.”
For a moment, Abass thought he had gone too far. The man’s face turned purple, and he marched off without another word. Abass knew plenty of similar men; the bastard would knife him in the back if he thought he had a chance—Father’s glory, he might even attack Abass face to face one day. If he did, though, the one eyed man would be too angry to be worth his blood. Tair bless me, though, if I’m worth my blood either, Abass thought. I’d be lucky to give the man a bruise in my condition.
Abass followed the one-eyed man’s passage toward the back of the house. He passed two large sitting-rooms, a dining room, and a paneled study before he reached the kitchen. A pair of kettles hung over the fire, and the one-eyed man sat nearby, poking the coals as though trying to kill them. The men sat in silence until the kettles sang, and then one-eye carried them to an adjoining room and poured them into a tub of water.
When the door had shut, Abass stripped off his torn linens and slid into the tub. He thought, for one moment, he might die of happiness. Then he set to work cleaning himself.
As he washed, he thought. Qatal. It all came back to that heart-of-stone bastard, and now Abass found himself in the house of Qatal’s only superior—the supposedly dead tun-esis. And that’s what the bastard wanted, Abass realized. He wants to be tun-esis now that Maq is gone. That’s why he offered Isola.
Abass realized he was gritting his teeth and forced himself to relax. He had more urgent problems. Such as why the most powerful man in Khi’ilan had faked his own death. Or what Eyl and Maq wanted with him. Or what in the Thirteen Paths a sark was. And why they’re keeping me here against my will. For a moment, Abass felt the walls closing in on him. I escaped from the pits; I can very well get out of a house in the middle of the city.
The door opened and the one-eyed man dropped a pile of clothes on the floor. “Hurry up,” he said and left.
Abass finished washing himself and then, after dunking himself in the tub one last time, dried off. The clothes were clean and plain—white linen shirt, brown trousers, soft leather shoes. He could walk almost anywhere in the city and not be looked at twice. Bathed, wearing clothes, and warm for the first time in what seemed like forever, Abass felt like a new man. If this is a prison, he thought, it’s a step up.
The one-eyed man awaited him in the kitchen. With a single jerk of his head, he motioned for Abass to follow him back to the front of the house and up to the next floor. Face set like a stone, the one-eyed man, opened a door and nodded again. In spite of his exhaustion, Abass gave the man a grin and strolled into the room. The door slammed shut behind him.
The scent of meat struck him like a velvet glove. Food. Real food sat on a table. Fatigue forgotten, Abass staggered to the desk and began to eat. Cold roast beef, still tender and moist, wilted greens, and delicate new potatoes, lightly browned, with gravy to top it all. A carafe of wine stood next to the plates. Abass did not bother with utensils or a cup. He ate and drank until his stomach, unaccustomed to so much solid food, threatened to revolt. He took two steps and collapsed onto the bed.
Slow, even breaths were all that kept the food down. The strong wine sent the room spinning around him. Abass kicked off the leather shoes, pulled his legs up, and felt himself slipping toward sleep. He thought he heard the door open, but he was too tired to care.
As the sound of wood on wood reached him though, he wondered, again, what these men wanted with him.
Something woke Abass. He jerked up with a start, the pain in his ribs flaring to life. With a moan—half contented, half pained—Abass fell back onto the firm mattress. For the first time in a long time, he felt good. His head seemed clear for the first time since entering the pits. The pain in his side was still there, but he still felt like a new man.
More slowly this time he raised himself from the bed to study the room. A desk, the food from the night before still there, and a chair. Both oak, simply made. The bed, though nothing special, felt like the softest down. A window that looked out on a low roof over an alley. A side table with a pitcher and basin, and blessed tair, a razor and soap. And above it, a mirror.
Abass made his way to the desk and picked over the food, salvaging a few pieces of roast beef and the last of the wine. Still chewing, he made his way to the side table, lathered his face, and began to shave.
The water was pink by the time he finished; the thin, patchy beard had come off easily, but the razor had opened old cuts that Abass had not even known he had. In spite of his stinging face, Abass felt better. Abass’s facial hair was too scraggly to grow into the massive, meticulously groomed beard that his father wore, but he hated it all the same.
With one last longing look at the empty plates, Abass tested the window. It opened easily; the men who lived here could not have been serious about keeping him captive if they were that careless. Abass put one leg through the window, wincing at the explosion of pain in his side, and then another.
“Poor repayment for our hospitality,” a man’s voice said behind him.
Abass hesitated; he could sling himself from the window, slide down the roof. It would hurt, but it couldn’t be worse than speeding down the face of a Sleeping Palace. His curiosity got the better of him. He glanced back.
“Tair take me,” Abass said, looking at the high priest. “I thought I’d dreamed that part. Where’d you come from?”
Maq sat in the plain chair. Another man might have gone unremarked in the plain brown trousers and blue-checked shirt, but Maq wore authority like a cloak. His ice-blue eyes never left Abass.
“Come in,” he said. “We need to talk. Do you have family? Anyone who should know you’re still alive?”
“I think I’ll just go tell them myself,” Abass said. “Many thanks for the meal and the clothes.”
“And for saving your
life?”
“I figure we’re close to even on that,” Abass said. “I did bring Eyl back here.”
“He would have been fine,” Maq said. “He chose to let himself crash.”
“Alright then,” Abass said. He turned and pushed himself through the window.
Somehow, impossibly fast, Maq was there, grabbing Abass as though he were a rag doll, lifting him back into the room. The tun-esis set him down on the bed gently, as though afraid of harming him, and then shut the window and set his back to it.
“Tair around us,” Abass said. Memories of Eyl in the caves came back at him. Eyl speeding through the darkness. Eyl smashing a wight to pieces with his bare hands. Eyl staggering like a drunk when they escaped. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to make you an offer,” Maq said. He paused, ice-blue eyes still fixed on Abass. “You aren’t going to ask what we are?”
“I asked Eyl,” Abass said. “He wasn’t much help.”
“Of course,” Maq said. “He fancies himself the thinker and then won’t give any answers. Getting hit on the head was the least he deserved.”
“He made it easy,” Abass said with a shrug.
“It wouldn’t have remained easy,” Maq said. “Eyl’s unpleasant when he’s angry.”
“So am I,” Abass said, giving Maq the smile he reserved for Truthers.
“Is that so?” Maq said. “Who do you want to tell you’re alive? Your family, where are they?”
Abass gave him a long look. He didn’t trust the tun-esis as far as he could throw him. “No family outside the pits. A couple of girls I know, though, probably wonder where I’m at. Naja and Segi. They live in the Alders.”
“Serhan,” Maq said. Although he did not raise his voice, the door opened almost immediately, and the one-eyed man poked his head into the room. Aside from a different scarf—this one a brilliant crimson with gold stitching—to cover his eye, the man looked the same. “Hurry to the Alders. A couple of girls there—Naja and Segi. Find them. Make sure they’re alright. Tell them he’s alive. Take Fadhra with you.”
Serhan glared at Abass for a moment, then nodded and shut the door.
“Make sure they’re alright?” Abass asked. “Why?”
“People who ask too many questions about the High Harvest offerings have a tendency to disappear.”
“Like you.”
“I wasn’t asking questions,” Maq said. “But yes, something like that.”
“Well I have a few questions,” Abass said. “If it’s such a simple question—what are you? And after that, maybe you could tell me why you’re supposed to be dead, and why I’m here?”
Maq smiled and said, “Easy enough. Not a new question in the bunch.”
“I’m nothing if not conventional,” Abass said, trying to look at ease on the bed.
“To answer your first question. We’re sarkomancers.” Maq paused and looked at Abass.
Abass stared back. He didn’t know the word, but he wasn’t going to let Maq know that.
Maq let out a laugh. “Tair around us, I think Eyl might be right about you. Sarkomancy. It’s one of the eses’ best kept secrets. The source of their power. The first records of sarkomancy go back to the founding of Nakhacevir. Described as a gift of the tair.”
“History?” Abass said. Scribe might love history, but Abass had never found it particularly helpful in cutting a purse.
“Perhaps a bit,” Maq said. “Sarkomancy is what allows the eses to be so effective. It’s a way of channeling the power of life to make oneself stronger. Faster. Deadlier.”
“The way Eyl moves. The way you do.”
“Eyl, yes,” Maq said. “I’m a bit of a different case. That doesn’t concern you, though.”
“And my other questions?” Abass asked.
“What?” Maq said. “Nothing else about sarkomancy?”
“Seems pretty simple,” Abass said.
“Far from it,” Maq said. “But that can wait. Why I’m supposed to be dead is a more difficult question. I’ll answer it more fully later, when I know you better. I needed to disappear, or I would have been dead in truth. Fair enough?”
Abass nodded.
“And the last one,” Maq said. “Why are you here? You’re interesting. Few men have the resources not only to escape from the pits, but to surprise and, at least temporarily, incapacitate a sarkomancer.”
“Interesting. Well, I’ve been called worse,” Abass said. “I’m not on exhibit, though, and I’d like to leave now.” Everything the man said stank of deep waters and big trouble, and Abass knew enough from the streets to know that when the waters rose, the weakest—and the lowest—were the first to drown. And that’s why I have the Perch.
“You don’t understand,” Maq said. “I’m offering you a chance to be one of us. A chance at power you’ve never dreamed of. A new life.”
“The first time I thought I was anything but street trash,” Abass said, “someone I loved got hurt. The last time, I ended up in the pits. I wasn’t born street trash, but by all the Paths I’ll die street trash. I think the tair has taught me that lesson well enough. Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to go.”
Maq grimaced. “Let me make you an offer,” he said. “Sarkomancy heals wounds in an incredible amount of time. Eyl’s arm will be back to new in a few days. You’re injured badly. The break in your ribs is worse than you realize. Let me show you how it can heal you. Then leave, if you still want to.”
Abass shook his head. “Not every hook is so well-baited,” he said, “but I’m no fish. Thanks again, for your offer and your hospitality.”
Maq glared, his eyes hard and cold, and he stood abruptly. For a moment Abass feared the tun-esis was going to attack him. Then the door crashed open.
Fadhra stood there, her pretty dark eyes wide. She looked at Abass. “You have to come now.”
His heart leapt painfully. “What is it?”
“The women. They’ve been attacked.”