Vile

by Keith Crawford

  “The key?”

  Seren shook her head, the jagged edge of hysteria in her movements. She struggled to say something, but Elianor did not have time to remove the gag. She tried to pull Seren’s wrists through the manacles, but they were tight. Elianor could see the bruised and broken flesh where the young woman had attempted the same thing. Glass shattered in the next room. The sound of struggle suddenly stopped. She heard the monks argue with one another, but she did not recognise the language.

  “Be brave,” she whispered to Seren. “I’ll be back with help.”

  Seren shook her head. Elianor wanted to remove the gag but was worried Seren would scream. She put her hand over Seren’s mouth.

  “I’ll get help. I’ll be back soon. You’re going to be okay.”

  Seren made a panicked lunge, as if she might force Elianor to carry her out, but the manacles caught her and dragged her back. Elianor was running back up the spiral staircase just as the monks re-opened the door.

  Chapter 37

  Her lantern was gone. Elianor leaned on the archway, afraid she might lose her balance in the dark and tumble down the spiral staircase behind her. She had left the lantern at the top of the stairs. Someone had taken it.

  She took a hesitant step. Whoever had taken her lantern could be out there, standing in the shadows, blade in hand. She might trip and fall. But there was no time. She lengthened her stride and ran through the darkness, trailing her fingertips along the smooth stone wall. The trapdoor in the ceiling was open. Just enough light to see the way. She gripped the rungs and hurled herself up the ladder.

  “What’s happening?” Derec called from his cell.

  “Shut up.”

  She and Nathaniel could make short work of the monks. But she had no idea where he was, no idea what the tattoo on his chest meant, and the thought of that night by the river annoyed her—never mind their confrontation in his chambers. That left the guardhouse. What if the guards were complicit? Was there anybody in Shadowgate she could trust?

  She kicked open the guardroom door. Cards from a poker game scattered as surprised guards jumped back from the table.

  “Your honour?” Sergeant Rees said.

  “Take me to the Captain,” Elianor snarled. At least she knew where she stood with Rees. She had watched him hand Begw to the monks.

  “She’s sleeping,” Rees said.

  “I don’t care.” She glared around the room. “All of you, weapons, armour, at the double. Be ready when I get back. Sergeant, give me your sword.”

  “My sword?”

  “Yes. I need a sword. Come with me.”

  “You heard her! Get a bloody move on!” Rees drew his sword and handed it to her hilt first. “This way, your honour.”

  Elianor held the sneer on her face. The sweat on her hands made her palms tingle. The back door led to a courtyard that Elianor recognised from her rooftop chase of Nathaniel. It wasn’t especially large, and there was only one exit, another door on the far end.

  “Let me go ahead and announce you,” Rees said.

  “No.”

  The inside was like a small cottage. She could see a kitchen, and a living room at the other end of a corridor. She turned left and ran up the stairs. Was Begw still on the table, the monks pumping black fluid into her veins? Was Seren still struggling to pull her manacles from the wall? Elianor went to push open the door but stopped when she heard what was being shouted.

  “We can kill her together.”

  “No. It has to be you.”

  It was Persephone who had spoken first, and Anton who continued.

  “This is your opportunity, Seph. This is how you make your mark, prove yourself to Lord Vile, and save Shadowgate.”

  “Save it from what? Are you that desperate to avoid the throne? I’ve told you before, I don’t want to be the next Lord Vile, I want to be your—”

  “If she isn’t stopped, she’s going to tear this community apart. People are going to die, Seph. You have to kill her.”

  “If it’s so important why don’t you do it? Scared?”

  “Damned right I’m scared. She’s a—”

  Elianor had heard enough. She slammed the door open, so fast that Rees, still coming up the stairs after her, almost stumbled and fell into her. Inside the chamber, Anton sat on the bed, his tool belt slung across the quilt and an open bottle of wine in his hand. Persephone stood, back to the window, sipping from a goblet.

  “Magistrate?” Persephone said.

  “Do you know who has Seren? Do you know where she is?”

  “What?” Anton said. He tried to pull on his tool belt but fell over his own feet, almost knocking a music box from the table by the window.

  “Answer the question, right now,” Elianor said, putting her hand on her knife.

  Persephone held her palm out across Anton.

  “I don’t know who has Seren. I don’t know where she is,” she said. “Anton, answer the Magistrate’s questions.”

  It wasn’t necessary to squint to use the Truthsense, but it was helpful to remind people not to lie.

  “No,” Anton said. “Neither do I.”

  They were telling the truth.

  “I do,” Elianor said.

  She punched Rees in the face. Stunned, he raised both hands. She kicked him in the chest. As he fell, she stamped on the back of his knee, then grabbed the back of his head and smacked it once, twice, into the wall. She let him go, turning him on his way so he slid down the stairs to the entrance hall. By the time Rees reached the floor, he was too stunned to move.

  “What the hell?” Anton shouted.

  “Seren and Begw are in a set of prison cells right below these barracks. Rees is involved. We will get them out. If any of your guards try to stop us, kill them.”

  Persephone put down her goblet.

  “We can’t do that!” Anton said. “We need proof.”

  “Your proof will be if they attack us. Captain?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, I understand,” Persephone said.

  “Good. Pick up the Sergeant and follow me.”

  By the time Persephone caught up, Elianor was halfway across the courtyard. The guards had their weapons and stood in a line. They snapped to attention.

  “You, what’s your name?”

  “Ty, my lady. Your honour.”

  “Take Sergeant Rees and put him in the cell next to Derec Garn. If he resists, kill him. Once you’ve locked the cell, come after us.”

  This was the moment. If they attacked her, she would have to kill the guards. And it seemed unlikely that Persephone or Anton would take her side.

  “Seren and Begw are being held captive by a group of Demon’s Pass monks. We will rescue them. Anybody who stands in our way is breaking the law, understand? Follow me.”

  They followed her. She did not look at Derec as she passed his cell and went through the trapdoor.

  “Pass a torch,” she called from the bottom of the ladder.

  By the time they reached the spiral staircase, Persephone had joined Elianor at the front of the column. Anton faded to the back. He had his hand on the arm of a young man and was whispering in his ear. Elianor held up her fist.

  “I will head into the group. Disable or kill any monk that comes past me. Anton, you and…”

  She clicked her fingers and pointed at the boy next to Anton.

  “Harran, my lady,” said the young guard.

  “You and Harran recover Begw and Seren as quickly as possible. Questions?”

  She didn’t give them a chance to ask.

  “Let’s go.”

  She drew the sword she had taken from Rees and sprinted down the stairs. The rattle of feet and the crash of metal on stone rang louder than an alarm bell. She reached the bottom a good few paces ahead of the others, and drove headlong into the antechamber, sword raised.

  The cells were empty.

  The door to the end room was open. There was nobody inside. Even the broken glass had been swept from the floor.

>   Chapter 38

  When Haf was a little girl, her mother had taken her to the stables and told her what to expect from adulthood: “Men are dogs. Treat them that way, or they will bite you.”

  Haf stopped at The Last Chance on her way up the mountain. She re-did the strapping around her sore ankle and chose a different dress. Less subtle, lower cut, but crimson red all the same. She cleaned away her makeup, re-applied it, and adjusted it, leaving the bruise uncovered. Tannyr would like that. She lifted her hair to put the long, sharp hairpin in place, and checked how she looked from each angle, to be sure the stiletto looked decorative rather than functional. Then she wrapped a long shawl over her head and waited for the sun to set.

  Haf had known the route from The Last Chance to the Brek farmhouse since childhood. She paused by the white fence to wipe the filth off her boots. Mud, animals, stink, and dull, dull conversations with people who thought marrying your cousin was a good idea. She breathed in the cool night air and put on her game face. Then she knocked on the back door, the one to the pantry and the staircase to the top floor.

  Tannyr’s daughter opened the door.

  “You’re not wanted here,” Eira said. “Mam says so.”

  “Let her through,” Uwen called from the kitchen.

  “Close the door behind me, Eira, there’s a good girl,” Haf said. “Are you going to escort me to him, Uwen?”

  “Yes.” Uwen kept his arms folded. She smiled at him.

  “Did Gwen get the herbs I sent her?”

  “What herbs?” Eira said.

  “Go make sure mother is still asleep in the kitchen,” Uwen said.

  As Eira slipped through the kitchen door, a waft of colour and warmth illuminated the pantry.

  “Come with me,” Uwen said to Haf.

  She kept her hands wrapped in her shawl as she followed him up the back stairs. Uwen’s shoulders were so broad they touched both walls. He did not look like his father. Maybe, Haf thought, he had a better heart. But not likely. All men were the same, underneath. All men but her Gwyion. Her mother had been wrong about that.

  Uwen stopped at the top of the stairs. The last door was oak, ostentatiously clashing with the rest of the building.

  “I’ll be waiting out here,” Uwen said.

  “I bet you will.”

  He moved aside as she passed so they would not touch, then closed the door behind her.

  “Haf,” Tannyr said. “You should have come sooner.”

  Untouched books on the shelves. A desk clear of papers. A chair with a fine layer of dust on the cushion. This wasn’t an office in which anyone worked. She and Gwyion managed the businesses from a cluttered office at the back of the hostel. Gwyion had another room, under the steam pump by the mine, which was so piled with boxes she worried they would fall and crush him. Haf licked her lips. She had to stop thinking about her husband. She drew back her shawl, but it caught on the hairpin and she had to talk to stop herself from panicking.

  “I came as soon as I could,” she said.

  Tannyr sat on his desk in the manner of a naughty schoolboy. It wasn’t hard to remember him that way, short trousers and bruises on his face from his father. Before the revolution, they had educated the children of wealthy parents together in a back room on the top floor of the church. She sat by the same window every day, looking out, away from Shadowgate, away from the mountains. He sat farther back, every day, looking at her.

  “I want to trade,” Haf said.

  Tannyr spat and rubbed his hands together.

  “What do you have that I want?”

  Half glided across the room. There was a large round table in the centre, decorated by some sort of cotton doily she imagined his wife had crocheted for him. She allowed her right hand to trail around its edge and tilted her head to expose the length of her neck.

  “The same thing you’ve always wanted.”

  “And you’ll give that to me?”

  “Show me the rifle.”

  “Why not,” he said, and jumped down. He gestured behind him, a magician revealing a magic trick. A long canvas bag with brown handles lay on the desk.

  “You had Uwen take it from the mine. Who did he pay off?”

  Tannyr undid the buckles and opened the bag. The rifle was inside, along with a bag of shot and the equipment required to clean and maintain the weapon. Haf catalogued it mentally, meticulously.

  “Why shouldn’t I take what I want from you and keep the rifle?” Tannyr said.

  Haf stood right in front of him, close enough she could smell him, that she knew he could smell her.

  “Because I can do things for you that your wife hasn’t even imagined.”

  She reached out with her finger and ran it down his chest, until it rested on his belt buckle. Tannyr swallowed, hard. With both hands she undid his belt.

  “Things you learned in your brothel?”

  “Things I taught in my brothel. That you’ve wanted from me since we were twelve years old.”

  She got on her knees. He clenched his fingers, then breathed out and placed both his hands behind him on the desk. She opened his trousers. His penis jerked and bounced, barely a half-inch away from her fingers. It strained to reach her. She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes.

  “Why are you doing this?” Tannyr said.

  “Because you are the only person who can save my son.”

  “What about Gwyion?”

  “Gwyion doesn’t have the power. You do.”

  She took him in her mouth. He sucked air in through his wide, ugly face and gripped the desk. As she moved around him, she slipped her fingers up and stroked the root of his testicles. The morning that Derec was born, Gwyion had sat with her the whole time, telling her stupid stories about chasing sheep or sneaking moonshine whiskey to the farmers. Stories she had heard before, and stories she would hear again, laughing as she held his hand. With her other hand, she took the shaft of Tannyr’s penis and moved it in rhythm with her mouth. He grunted. He smelled like his farm.

  Suddenly, he pulled back and lifted her up by the armpits. She turned her shock into a smile and kept looking him in the eyes as he pushed her onto the table. The stupid cotton doily gathered up in the small of her back. I like the life I chose, she thought. I love the life I chose. He can’t change that. This doesn’t change that.

  “Go on,” she said, helping him hitch up her dress. “Do it.”

  He tugged at her undergarments. She wriggled and writhed around him, draped her hand across his back, and reached to guide him into her. But her body didn’t want to co-operate. Still, it was easy to disguise a scream of pain as a scream of pleasure. Most men barely noticed the difference. His grunting got louder. How she’d wanted to bite when he’d been in her mouth, to unman him, to rip his manhood out by the root with her teeth. But this was better. Safer. Who would question if he screamed now? Who would dare to intrude? Slowly, she reached up and loosened her hair, winding out the hairpin. A stiletto disguised as a hairpin.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes!” she called.

  “Oh, Haf,” he said. “Haf. Haf.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. She cringed at the taste of his breath. He didn’t notice. He ran his sausage fingers through her hair. They caught in the tangle, pulled painfully on her scalp. With a clatter, the hairpin stiletto fell out and bounced across the table. For a moment, Haf thought it would fall out of reach.

  “Ughn,” he cried. Haf felt him shudder through her hips and up her spine. She curled her hand around the back of his neck, stroked the sensitive place below his hairline, marked it like a target. Exhausted, post-orgasmic, he lay perfectly still.

  “You can take it,” he said

  “What?”

  Her fingertips were on the stiletto.

  “The rifle,” Tannyr said. “Take it.”

  He raised his head and looked her in the eyes.

  “You mean it?” she said.

  He pulled himself out of her. The pain made her eyes water
. She snatched the stiletto and sat up, drawing her dress back around her as she hid the weapon back in her hair. He held the rifle out to her, his trousers around his ankles like a toddler lost on the way to the toilet.

  “Save your son. If you think you still can.”

  She took the rifle. He lowered his arms. She could still feel his wet between her legs. She wanted to be sick.

  “I can go?” she said.

  “You’ll only make things worse. You ruin everything you touch. And when you’ve destroyed all you love, when you’re broken, then I’ll take you how I really want you.”

  She backed up towards the door, the rifle clutched across her breast. The pain made it difficult to walk.

  “Don’t worry,” Tannyr said. “I’ll come for you soon.”

  Uwen did not look at her as she left. She did not look at him. She limped down the stairs, down into the cold pantry, warmed by light coming through the open door into the kitchen. Ifanna sat in the kitchen, rocking back and forth in her chair, prayer beads passing through her fingers.

  “Whore,” Ifanna said.

  ◆◆◆

  Tannyr came down a short while later. He walked into the kitchen, unbuckled his trousers, and wiped himself with a dish towel. Ifanna took her beads and left. Uwen waited in the pantry. Tannyr stretched, then turned to face his eldest boy.

  “That went well,” he said.

  He walked up to his son and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “She won’t have got far. You know what you have to do?”

  “Yes, Da.”

  “I’m proud of you, boy.”

  “Thank you, Da,” Uwen said.

  Chapter 39

  Elianor stood in the garden of dead vines and waited for the daylight to come and wash away her shame. No part of her mission, her real mission, involved rescuing civilians or fighting Kindred. The future of the Kingdom would be determined by the politics of the Senate. And she couldn’t succeed in her mission, or even rescue Seren or Begw, if she got killed making wild accusations against Arbalest Vile while surrounded by his guards and his children. Still, there was a web here waiting to be unwoven, an entanglement of facts whose truth could only be appreciated when seen as a whole. And the Dead Garden was not a place for mysteries to be solved. No sunlight could reach down to the boxed-in plot, and what warmth touched her face was merely refraction from windows looking out from empty rooms. Yet here she stood.