Some people follow us with their eyes, talking excitedly, but many are far more interested in what is happening at the bank proper. Our exit, fast as it is, serves to give us a head start on anyone attempting to tail us. We duck into the line of people, twisting and turning through the growing crowd pushing forward to see what’s happening. The thickening crowd only serves to hide our escape.
“Well, that got exciting pretty fast,” Timo says from over my head as we walk, but I can hear the grin in his voice. “Wasn't there anything in the vault? You came back empty handed.”
“There were just...” I trail off, having difficulty coming up with any explanation for the boots. The man inside them stirs, but I send him such a mental glare that he subsides again. I check the mental wall separating our energy, and it seems to be intact. Not that I trust it, or him, for a second. I’ll have to deal with him later.
“Nothing of value,” I say, smugly. That's right, boots.
“Pity,” Timo says, momentarily despondent. Then, he brightens just as quickly. “We'll just have to come up with something better next time. At least we have a story to tell the kids!”
I smile, hugging the big man closer to me. As soon as we can, I’m going to get the kids together again. We might have to leave Donir, what with Gordyn having seen my face. There aren’t exactly a wide variety of dark-skinned thieves wandering the streets. The connection between 'Kettle' and 'Aea Po'lial' doesn’t take a massive leap. We need to bring the Family back together and head for greener pastures. As soon as we can get Rita—
“Shit.”
“What?” Timo asks, suddenly alarmed and alert.
“Corna's still in there.”
“She'll be fine,” Timo says, though his voice sounds decidedly unconvinced. “She's gotten out of worse.”
“Right. Of course,” I say aloud, but an ominous chill creeps down my spine.
Chapter 10
Jace
The Thirtieth Day of Spring
In the Year 5222, Council Reckoning
“Am I ever going to get to learn how to fight?” I ask, breathing smoothly and easily after an hour of steady work against eight poles. I haven’t missed a single slash, every attack slicing precisely through the appropriate color, every blow coming swift and certain.
“What do you think you've been doing all this time?” Reknor asks quizzically. “Learning to dance?”
“Practically,” I mutter, letting my fourth cracked practice sword drop to the ground with a clatter, so much kindling for the fire. “I can't imagine using this to defend myself against anyone. But I could definitely win against a tree.”
“Fine,” Reknor says, impatience in his voice. “You want to learn how to fight? How to kill a man? Then pass one more test. If you pass, I'll teach you how to fight another person.”
“Done,” I say instantly. “What's your test?”
“Wait here,” Reknor says over his shoulder as he leaves the room.
He returns in a moment with a cloth that can only be meant for one thing. A blindfold. When he has the cloth firmly settled over my eyes, tied tight enough to practically cut off the circulation to my brain, a set of thuds and scrapes immediately draw my interest like a bear to honey. No matter how I think, though, I can’t imagine what he’s doing.
“Do you remember where the poles are?” Reknor asks from behind me.
“Of course,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. The hilt of a sword slaps into my palm, and I almost rip the blindfold off immediately. This is no wooden practice sword. I can feel the heft of it, so much lighter and sleeker than what my hands are used to. I can't properly describe how I know, but I’m holding a sword of sharp and deadly metal.
“Green four!” Reknor shouts.
I react by instinct, bringing the blade up and around in a cut at waist height. The sword slams into something with the sound of screeching metal. Before I have time to think, he shouts again.
“Cyan eight!”
I swing down in a crouch, low, my blade again screeching across metal. The shouts come frequently, practically as fast as I can recover, and each time the scream of metal on metal meeting my attack. Finally, Reknor begins to rapidly shout the colors of two of the poles, and I square up and strike blow after blow against my unseen metal foes.
When Reknor stops calling out colors, the sudden silence leaves me breathless. The clamor of the sword is a banshee’s wail that drowns out all else. I breathe in once, deeply, then let the sword's point come to rest on the floor.
“Red one!” Reknor shouts, and I snap my sword up. It clashes against the metal one final time. “Take off your blindfold.”
I rip it off to see Reknor standing there with sweat running down his face. His sword strains against mine. My blade is in perfect position to block his overhead strike. I could easily cut downwards from the block and into his throat or unprotected chest.
“But...” I breathe, my mind struggling to catch up. “But they are just poles!”
“Green two,” he says, swinging his blade around in a horizontal slash at my torso. My arms move automatically into position to block. My sword rings against his with precision. He doesn’t say anything, but sends a blurring attack at my neck. His blade meets mine, perfectly positioned in pink one. We exchange several more lightning fast blows, but nothing comes close to me as I bat away each strike with ease.
“Okay,” I say, stepping back. “I get your point.”
“Now remember this one. I taught you to use a sword so that you won't be afraid of knives, or guards, or thieves. I did not teach you the sword to kill anyone.”
“Isn't that the point of a sword?”
Wordlessly, he drops his sword, moves in to grasps my arm. In my confusion, I don’t resist. He flips me over and kicks the sword away, twisting my arm behind my back. My bones creak under the pressure like a branch under snow. A bit more pressure and my arm will be a flapping, useless wing on a flightless bird.
“Have I done wrong?” Reknor asks calmly, coldly. I can tell that the question is more to himself than to me. “I saw goodness in you. I could have sworn you would turn out to be a decent man. If not, I should end this right now.”
He puts a bit more pressure on my sword arm, and I gag from the pain. I can’t say anything; the agony shoots up my arm and rips into my soul like a lance driven by the Creator's own hand. For a long moment, he presses silently, weighing my fate. Finally, endlessly, the pressure eases a bit and I can breathe again. Tears stream down my face as he continues to hold me face-down on the floor.
“Why did I teach you the sword?”
“To take away my fear,” I say breathlessly.
“When do you use a sword?”
“I don't know!” I blurt out, desperate.
His grip vanishes. I roll onto my good side, cradling my injured arm and fighting back the tears. Reknor crouches next to me.
“I'm sorry, Jace,” he says quietly, raking his fingers through his unkempt hair. “You only use a sword when there are no other options. It is the last option of all good men to resort to violence. Even then, you do not kill without necessity or good cause. It is the one act you can never take back, and leaves your soul stained in ways you cannot imagine.”
I don’t say anything. Somewhere in my mind, deep inside, I’ve always held Reknor in fear. The vast majority of the time, he’s as gentle as a kitten, playful and joyful. He teaches me with unending patience, and I’ve grown to respect and admire him on many levels.
But a small part of me remembers the ice in his voice when I spit on his floors in the first seconds of our relationship. The same part remembers the ease with which he dispatched seemingly insurmountable foes—unarmed—to save my life. My street self, buried under the gentle curiosity and education of my new life, reawakens to remind me: Reknor is not a man to cross.
“Do you understand, Jace?”
“Yes.”
“Fine,” Reknor says distractedly, standing with an explosive sigh. “Fine. This has b
een coming on for a few weeks now. For the last two years, you’ve been progressing at a remarkable rate. You’ve picked up swordplay like a prodigy and have taken to learning like a drowning man to the sight of land. You’ve nearly finished my library already, and soon I won't be able to touch you with a blade, either.”
I sit up straighter with a mixture of embarrassment and pride, the ache in my shoulder forgotten. Reknor hasn’t ever said anything even remotely this glowing in the past two years.
“But,” he says, raising a finger. “Your education is lacking in one specific area.”
“And what is that?”
“Real experience. Fighting in a controlled environment against the same opponent, no matter how cunning or capable, will not make you the elite swordsman you could be. Reading a book can't teach you about love or anger, just the theory of it. Are you still afraid of knives? Thieves? Fire? The Tide?”
“I...” I stop, thinking hard on my education, the knowledge and confidence I’ve gained. The image of Rosie's blood hanging in the air comes back to me, and I suppress a shudder, but it’s easier than I imagined it would be. “I have no idea.”
“Exactly. You'll only learn that back out in the world. No more avoiding the streets. No more locking yourself in this house. In fact, I’m going to force you into situations where you can really... learn,” Reknor says with a grin. “Learn things that no one else has the opportunity to learn. You know the theories now, Jace. Let's put them to the test.”
***
“To know a man, you have to walk and fight in his shoes. Tenfold for women,” Reknor says, shoving me towards the door.
Before I can hesitate, I slip out the front and shuffle down the cobbled road. I’ve reached hardly halfway to my destination in agonizingly slow steps before my back begins to burn and my calves begin to chafe. I haven’t passed anyone, and already, I can feel eyes crawling on me. I want to run, to climb, but I force myself to maintain my infernal pace as I near the end of the bustling intersection at the end of the street. Slowing further, I peer upward at the dozens of men and women who pass to and fro across my narrow line of sight. No matter how hard I try, I can’t force myself to move the last few paces and step into the light.
Reknor's idea of education is, to put it frankly, ludicrous.
I’m wrapped feet to brow in itchy rags, shuffling along in my best imitation of the oppressed and downtrodden. Reknor has decided that my first experience won’t have anything to do with either fighting or learning, but survival. I’m supposed to be a leprous beggar.
Leprosy. Mankind's worst nightmare.
To have your flesh stop responding, portions of your body rotting away and falling off, turning swiftly grotesque and horrifying. It says a lot about my respect for Reknor that I even let him wrap me up, let alone turn me loose in the streets to beg for coins. I’ve always hated begging. Even as a homeless child I could barely stoop to groveling for passersby like a worm. My pride and Jonah’s teachings were the only thing that kept me from that ignoble life.
Ahead of me, a man turns down the street with a parcel under his arm. The sight of me brings him up short. He’s in his middle years, with brown hair and a long overcoat with a paired top hat. His face morphs swiftly through surprise, pity, and revulsion as he stares at me. He swiftly crosses to the far side of the street and strides as quickly as possible away from me.
I recover my wits in time to feel a flash of anger at the man’s callous reaction. How dare he look at me like that? Something shoves me in the back as I’m glaring at the man’s back. I stumble and fall to the ground.
“How did you get out of your filthy little colony, I wonder?” a man’s voice says, his voice close.
I struggle to turn over in the constricting wrappings. A man of the Watch stands over me, his expression reeking of disgust. Creator’s saggy balls, I left the house five minutes ago. Of all the luck… shit. The cloth of my head dressings catches in my mouth and stops up my tongue, so I can’t even speak. All that emerges from my mouth are frantic grunts as he bends down to lift me up, careful not to let me touch his skin.
“Stop squirming now, boy, or I’ll be forced to lay you out.”
I twist to free my arm, if only to clear my dressings and speak. My right arm rips free, and I reach my hand to my face in an attempt to rip the cloth from my mouth. Just as it begins to give way something crushes against the side of my head. I stagger, wavering in and out. I fight against the waves of weariness crashing over me long enough to hear another man speak.
”Wouldn’t want to catch anything. Thank the Creator you’re wearing gloves.”
“Take this thing back to the leper colony in the Corpses.”
“We’ll be…” The blackness overcomes me.
***
Pain. I ache from a dozen deep bruises and a deep-rooted pain in my skull. A woman, brilliant blonde and beautiful, wavers in front of my eyes. I reach out to try to steady her and get a closer look, grasping feebly in an attempt to stop the rocking motion of the two, no, four women floating in front of me. The motion sets my brain to rocking. I close my eyes and sink back with a soft moan. The world spins behind my eyelids, and I turn sharply and retch. A weak spume streams out from between my lips, and my stomach tries to climb out of my throat. I squeeze my eyes shut tightly and concentrate on the deep and total darkness. After a minute or so, the dizziness begins to abate, so I force my eyes open once again. A small mound of straw lies beside me, and I promptly sneeze. My head strikes up another round of glorious combat with consciousness, forcing me to swallow back the bile that rises in my throat. I groan and attempt to curl up into a tighter ball.
The world does not exist. The pain is just a figment of a tortured imagination. For some reason, the insistent litany works, calming my head and my heaving innards. A female voice is speaking.
“...should be alright, but the lad seems to have taken quite a blow.”
“You can see the blood, yes. I would have attempted to treat him already, but head wounds are some of the trickiest ailments to diagnose.”
I latch on to the woman’s voice as my sole source of hope for a return to humanity. Her voice is a sweet melody with just the faintest trace of an accent. Withholding a second sneeze, I slowly flex each of my muscles to assess the damage. My legs are largely unharmed, but both my torso and my arms feel as if someone has driven sledgehammers into them for a week. I groan and force myself upright, with surprising success.
I’m in the corner of a dilapidated single-roomed hut bricked in clay on a mound of straw obviously used for a bed. A few ramshackle chairs surround a small circular table in another corner, the only other object of note a faded medical bag propped against the far wall. A woman stands in the threshold of the cottage speaking to someone without. Her hair is a lusterless blonde, matted and filthy. As she concludes her conversation, she turns to face me.
We both jump simultaneously as our eyes meet, my stomach twisting in immediate revulsion. Her face is a deformed mass, as if something has eaten a critical portion of her face. One of her eye sockets gapes dark and empty. I gag by reflex and instantly she comes to my side. I scrabble at the earth to get away from her and in my terror bump the back of my head into the wall behind me. The room once again takes up its unfortunate dance with my eyesight. I vomit weakly, but still I clutch vainly at the straw in an attempt to drag myself farther from her. Whatever this monster is, it’s coming for me, and there’s nowhere I can go.
My panic cracks as I register the expression on what remains of her face. She’s not coming any closer. I’ve crammed myself so tightly in a corner that I can’t move. The fact that she remains sitting, quietly and somehow sadly watching, forces my gaze from her deformed features to her remaining eye. In its depths lurk intelligence… and sorrow. Behind her grotesque visage lies an infinite sadness and bitterness. To be condemned to this…life, this prison of leprosy, is beyond my understanding. I open my mouth to speak, and she raises what remains of her eyebrow in anticipati
on.
“I… I’m sorry for my reaction and to your… ah…well,” I trail off into awkward silence. I can’t find the words.
“Don’t worry,” she says with a smile somewhere in her still-musical voice. “I get that a lot.”
She says it as a joke, but my heart breaks for her.
“I’m Jace,” I say hesitantly and slowly, but deliberately, and reach out my hand for her to shake. Surprise kindles in her eye, but then she claps her hands, the sound dulled by the wrappings around her fingers.
“Oh, how crude of me! Here you are a guest in my home and you don’t even know my name. I am Juliet, and a pleasure to meet you.”
I can’t suppress a chuckle, and she joins in after a moment. I deliberately refuse to look anywhere but her sparkling blue eye. Anything else might invite the crack in my heart to widen. I’ve known her for seconds, but I can’t bear the thought of what she is… and what she might have been. Small talk seems pointless considering our situation, so I just rest and concentrate on a room spinning with slightly less authority. Her posture sings of uncertainty as she opens her mouth to speak.
“I… if it’s too hard to talk about, or you don’t want to, I completely understand, but I was wondering how long you’ve been…” she gestures lamely at my dressings.
I don’t understand for a second. Oh.
Shit.
“Juliet. I’m…” I trail off.
I honestly started to say untainted. How callous. How ignorant. I struggle to find the words, but I can’t find any that don’t demean the woman sitting before me. How can I explain? What can I even say?
“I understand,” she says, reaching out and patting my hand gently.
I laugh, the sound strangled and strange in the tiny room.
“I’m not sick,” I finally say.
“None of us are,” she answers, canting her head curiously.
“No, I don’t mean sick, I mean I’m healthy…” I stop when I see her growing both more hurt and confused.
The Crux of Eternity: Eternal Dream, Book 1 (The Eternal Dream Saga) Page 23