by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 36
Angry voices greeted Abass as he entered Maq’s house. They came from the back parlor, and Abass hurried to see what happened.
Qatal stood at one of the covered windows, white-blond hair shining in the candlelight, face set in hard lines. Maq sat in one of the covered chairs, but his lined face was red, and he gripped the arms of the chair tightly. Fadhra and Eyl stood against the wall near the door, faces blank. Only Serhan was missing.
“What’s going on here?” Abass asked.
Maq threw up one hand. “Perfect,” he said. “You’ve dragged this out long enough that he’ll be sure to go.”
Qatal smiled, but he did not relax. “I think I’ve found Isola,” he said.
Abass stared hard at his brother-in-law, resisting the urge to smile. The bastard had found her. Abass was supposed to have been the one to find her, to bring her out of the pit. To rescue her. “Where?”
“I overheard Balat talking today; they have been moving groups of offerings to different holds. Something new is afoot, and I am no longer in the tair’s confidence it seems.”
“Because you’ve wasted so much time looking for her,” Maq said. “Someone was bound to notice how often you were gone. You threw away our chance.”
“She’s my wife, Maq,” Qatal said. “I wasn’t going to leave her there.”
“You put her there,” Abass said. “I can’t imagine it would bother you that much.”
Qatal flinched. After a moment, he said, “Nevertheless. I will get her out of there, I promise you.”
“And throw everything we’ve worked for away,” Maq said.
“So where is she?” Abass said.
“There are a dozen holds,” Qatal said. “Scattered across the Path. But I’ve narrowed it down to four. All within an hour’s ride of the city—close enough to bring the offerings back if there’s need at the High Harvest.”
“Fool,” Maq said. “This has nothing to do with the High Harvest; this is new, and we are blind to it because of your obsession.”
“I’ve made my choice,” Qatal said. “Our deal is ended.”
Maq stood, and his hand hovered at a pouch near his waist. His dew. Abass held his breath; if the two fought, he’d be free to find Isola on his own. But not without the information Maq had.
“Enough,” Abass said and stepped between them. “Where is she, Qatal?.”
Maq gave a grunt and marched from the room.
“We’ll have to go and see,” Qatal said, flashing quick, nervous smile. “They don’t keep records. She has to be at one of them, though.”
Qatal didn’t know. The bastard didn’t know, but at least it was a chance. Nights of racing through the pits, fueled by dew, had yielded nothing. This, however slim, was a chance.
“Tonight,” Abass said.
Qatal nodded.
“I’m going too,” Fadhra said, pulling her dark hair back. “I’m bored with running through the pits.” She turned to Eyl. “You?”
“Maq says no, I say no,” Eyl said. “And tair bless you if Serhan gets wind of this before you leave.”
Fadhra frowned. “He’ll be gone for a few days; by the time he’s back, this will be over, and we’ll have Maq smiling again.”
“Father take us if we don’t,” Eyl said. He nodded once to Abass and left the room.
“Holds,” Fadhra said to Qatal. “That means salt-blades.”
Qatal nodded.
“And Renewed,” Fadhra said.
Another nod.
“Exciting.” She smiled.
Dew pounded through Abass as he crouched at the edge of the woods, giving the darkness the appearance of mid-day. Hickory and red oak grew close together, almost a wall of trees. Abass had heard of southern forests where trees had to struggle to survive, fighting to reach the light, and the ground was bare beneath the spreading branches. In the Paths, though—in Nakhacevir—life flourished.
Fadhra shifted, and the movement brought Abass back to the moment. The hold stood a good half-mile from them, in the center of a clearing. The clearing must have required a great deal of effort to maintain in the fertile land. Nothing grew to offer concealment—even the grass was kept short.
The hold itself, one of the few stone buildings in Khi’ilan, was a single, massive building. Unlike the Sleeping Palaces, though, the hold had no graceful façade, no vast windows or balconies. A few small windows pierced the stone, and yellow candlelight shone from within. The hold—a prison. A cattle pen. Abass gritted his teeth as he thought of Isola trapped inside.
“If there’s a Renewed,” Qatal said. “Run. Don’t look back. Same if there’s a salt-blade.”
Abass nodded. His mouth was dry. Suddenly it seemed incredibly foolish to attack with nothing but his bare hands and a pouch full of rendered pig fat at his belt. He shifted, grateful that he was dressed in black. Anyone without dew would have a hard time seeing him.
Fadhra just shook her head at Qatal’s words and launched herself into the air. Qatal followed; his movements were slightly different from Fadhra’s, a different kind of grace. Abass took a deep breath, smiled at the darkness, and leapt into the air.
He flew through the night, the air whistling past him, and landed with a crack on the roof of the hold. Abass looked down and saw deep lines in the stone beneath his feet. When he looked up, Fadhra gave him a tight smile and shook her head. He grinned back.
Without a word, Fadhra walked to the edge of the building and stepped off, falling. Abass moved to the ledge and found the glow of yellow light below. He took a breath. In spite of the dew that still pulsed in him, his heart flew into his mouth as he stepped off the roof.
Panicked gripped him for a moment as the ground raced up at him. Abass let the dew wash over him, slowing everything, so that he seemed to float like a feather. Though the speed of his flight had not changed, though time still moved the same, everything seemed to take a dozen times longer. He reached out and snagged the windowsill almost leisurely. His arms and shoulders cried out at the sudden flash of pain, but the dew kept him from injuring himself. In a heartbeat Abass pulled himself up and through the narrow stone window, into the hold.
A man in the green robes of an esis sat at a desk, reading by candlelight. The esis looked up at Abass, his movements almost comically slow to Abass’s dew-enhanced speed. Abass stepped forward, bringing one arm back, ready for the blow that would end the esis’s life. Rage, like a ravening wolf, crashed over Abass as he moved within reach of the esis.
Something changed. The dew-light wavered and folded in on itself, plunging the room into near darkness. Suddenly the man was moving faster, too fast, and Abass stumbled. His blow went wide as the esis darted back. Abass hit the wall and cried out as pain shot up his arm. With dew in him, he should have cracked the stone; he should have felt nothing. The pain in his arm was real, however, and it throbbed so that Abass barely noticed the esis approach, a blade in his hand.
The blade. Danger pushed back the pain. Abass stepped back, still shaking his arm, and looked at the esis.
The broad-shouldered man—head shaved, chin covered in scruff—looked more like a Truther thug than a priest. In one hand he held a white blade that sparkled in the candlelight, rainbow shimmers running along the sequined metal. A salt-blade. Abass could feel it now, somehow—impossibly—negating the dew. For a single heartbeat, Abass felt fear. Weakness. He was nothing again.
Abass forced himself to think. One Truther thug. Abass grinned at the esis. He had seen worse odds.
The esis attacked, blade flashing toward Abass’s face. Abass ducked and stepped back. He came up against the wall. The window was next to him. He could throw himself out, hope the dew would activate again. The landing would not be a problem—if the dew worked. If it didn’t . . . well, the window seemed like a last resort.
Moving with a speed that surprised Abass, the esis struck again, the blade darting forward for two quick jabs. Abass threw himself to one side, but the room
was small, and he found himself cornered almost immediately.
As the esis drew back his arm for another blow, Abass darted forward. He grabbed the esis’s arm and held it with one hand. He slammed the butt of his injured hand into the esis’s chest, grunting at the shock of pain that ran up his arm. Abass heard the breath leave the esis’s lungs with a satisfying whoosh. Abass clipped the winded man’s legs with one sweep. They fell, and Abass drove his knee into the esis’s crotch as they hit the stone.
He pried the blade from the esis’s hand, still grappling as the injured man tried to fight. Abass brought the knife in quick and low across the esis’s throat. Blood, dark in the shadows of the candlelight, poured out across the stone.
Abass grimaced and tossed the knife—the rainbow patterns gliding undisturbed across the blood—out the window. Within a heartbeat, the candlelight seemed to swell out, magnified by the dew, until Abass could see perfectly.
He grabbed the corpse with his dew-enhanced strength and threw him from the window. There was nothing malicious in his act; blood had been spilled on stone, and Abass did not want to have to deal with a stone-wight on top of everything else. The pain in Abass’s hand dwindled, although an echo remained; he had most likely broken something, but the dew would help him to keep functioning, at least until it ran out.
Abass snuffed the candle and opened the door. The hallway was darker—even with the dew, it held shadows. A good sign; that meant that a normal man would see nothing. And a Renewed? Abass wished he knew the answer to that question.
Fadhra and Qatal would be searching the other floors. Abass moved down the hallway, using dew-enhanced hearing to listen at door after door. He heard nothing. When he reached the end of the hall, he turned and tried the other side. Silence again. Abass frowned and reached out to test a door. Locked.
He took a step back and charged into the wooden door. It splintered under the force of his blow, collapsing underneath him. Abass staggered through, wincing as the fragments tore at his arms and face, and he felt his footing give slightly as he entered the room. The stench of something old and rotting struck him.
Windmilling his arms, Abass brought himself to a stop. He stood ankle-deep in soil, but he could feel the stone beneath it. Soil. They had carted it up all these floors to coat a cell in the hold. And in the center of the room, resting on top of the black earth, lay a body. A man, middle-aged, paunch spread out like the stub of a melted candle, and a few weeks dead, to judge by the decay.
Abass gagged and covered his nose. The smell crept through anyway, strong and clear to his enhanced senses. He gagged and staggered from the room.
The scent clung to him. Abass stared at the rows of doors, revolt and fear growing inside him. He moved down the hallway, kicking open door after door.
Cell after cell of rich black soil. Body after body. Men and women, children and the aged. Dead and rotting and lying half-buried in dirt.