by Carol A Park
To the abyss with him. “She doesn’t need a handler,” Vaughn said.
And then he left.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Monsters at the Wall
Vaughn spent the next three days pounding his head on the wood of the table in the back room of the library. Sometimes literally.
At first, he assumed he had forgotten more than he had thought. It had been a long time ago, after all, that a childhood tutor had taught him a bit of Xambrian. But after three days, he was beginning to suspect a different cause for his frustration. It simply wasn’t possible that he didn’t recognize any of it. Surely the word for ‘god’ or some other common word he could remember would have shown up, yet nothing stood out.
After dinner on the third day, he needed a break—and a new tactic. He picked up the book he had been flipping through, tucked it under his arm, and headed toward the research wing. It was a slim chance, but that woman had started this. Maybe she could help him finish it. Had anyone even tried to talk to her?
The researchers eyed him as he strode down the hallway, but no one stopped him. It wasn’t as if only certain people were allowed in this area. It was simply that those who didn’t need to go here, didn’t.
When he reached the room that housed the woman, he stopped and peeked into the window. She was sitting on a cot that someone had kindly provided, head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed. He wondered wryly who had lost the draw to be the one to have to lug a cot in there.
He stopped a middle-aged researcher walking by. “Excuse me,” he said, and then searched for a name. He didn’t know the researchers well. “Airec, is it?”
The researcher nodded in confirmation.
“Is there a way I can talk to her?” Vaughn pointed at the woman.
Airec looked at him like he was crazy. “She doesn’t talk.” He started to turn away, as if that resolved the problem.
Vaughn knew that wasn’t true. “Are you sure?” Vaughn asked. “I mean, has anyone tried?”
Airec hesitated. “I guess when they first brought her here,” he said. “But she was more interested in fighting than talking.” He frowned. “The only way you could talk to her would be to go in there, and we only do that if it’s an absolute necessity.”
Vaughn held up his book, letting it fall open to a random page. “See this?”
Airec stared at it. “Uh…”
“Recognize any of it?”
“No.”
“Right, well neither do I. I’m about to gouge my own eyes out, and it’s possible this woman might be able to help me. I’m getting desperate.”
Airec glanced down the hall, as if longing to escape from this, and then sighed. “All right. But I wouldn’t go in defenseless. Wait here.”
He disappeared into a door across the way, and then came back out with a full syringe a few minutes later.
Vaughn took it delicately. “What’s this?” he asked suspiciously.
“A normal sedative, extra strength. If she gets too close, plunge it in anywhere. It won’t last long, but it’ll put her to sleep almost immediately.” He held up a finger as Vaughn tucked the syringe into the inside pocket of his jacket. “Careful. It’d kill you.”
He moved over to the window. “I’ll stay here and keep watch. Just don’t take long. I have things to do.”
Vaughn nodded his thanks, took a deep breath, and slipped into the room. He patted the bulge on his jacket to reassure himself.
The woman opened her eyes as he stepped in, and he froze, holding his hands out in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Please. I want to talk.”
To his relief, she didn’t move toward him, but her eyes never left him either.
He held open the book like he had for the researcher. “Do you recognize this?”
She didn’t even look at the book. Just stared at him.
All right. He had been reaching. He closed the book and tried again. Maybe she would tell him what they wanted to know. “Why can’t you be Sedated?”
At the word Sedated, her face changed from impassive to hostile. Vaughn backed toward the door, but it was a good sign. It meant she did understand some of what he was saying. “Please stay calm,” he said. “I’m like you. I understand.”
A hiss left her mouth. “You’re nothing like me,” she said. Her voice was low and raspy, as if from disuse, which he supposed made sense.
He dared a glance back at the researcher, who was watching through the window. He seemed faintly surprised, but Vaughn doubted he could hear what was being said—only noted that she had moved her lips to speak.
The woman hadn’t moved, but she was watching Vaughn with naked enmity.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said quietly.
She laughed, and the only word to describe the sound was crazed. Just like her.
“Everyone is my enemy,” she whispered. “Everyone.” Something akin to despair flashed across her eyes—making her seem, for a moment, almost human. Then it disappeared, and she started rocking back and forth. “Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone…”
She kept muttering the word, and Vaughn was at a loss. Whatever momentary lucidity she had displayed was gone.
He tried again. “What is your name?”
She stopped muttering and recoiled farther against the wall. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”
He breathed out slowly. She was growing tense, and he had the instinctive feeling that if he didn’t wrap this up soon, she was going to attack him.
“All right. Forget the name. Can you tell me what happened to you?”
She hissed again. “You,” she said. “You. All of them. All of you! You think you’ll stop me.” She laughed. “I dare you. I dare you!” And then her posture changed, from merely tense to a wildcat about to spring.
That was it. Vaughn felt for the doorknob, backed through it, and slammed it shut just as she lunged for him.
Airec hurried over to lock it again. Vaughn rested his head against the door, heart pounding. He retrieved the syringe from his jacket with sweaty palms and handed it back to the researcher. He could hear her thrashing about inside the room, and he dared to peek through the window. She was throwing herself against the wall, shrieking.
“I told you it was pointless,” Airec said.
“But she talked to me. For a moment, I think she was even coherent.”
Airec shook his head. “Did it do any good? No. Not worth the trouble, that’s what I say.” He shook his head and hurried away.
Vaughn stared numbly through the window and flinched back when the woman picked up the cot and hurled it toward the window at him.
The window was too small for her to squeeze through, thankfully, and he assumed if she could rip apart the walls—designed to withstand some of the worst bloodbane—she would have done so already.
But what about the bugs? Why hadn’t she simply called a swarm of wasps, or the like, to torture her captors into letting her go?
He swallowed. Maybe the researcher was right. Maybe they should execute her, deal with whatever monster her death generated, and be done with it.
But as he stared at her, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Maybe the Conclave’s attempts at Sedation had damaged her mind, even if it hadn’t suppressed her abilities.
And even though the conversation hadn’t exactly been helpful, he was more convinced than ever that they might be able to get something out of her, if they could only figure out how to approach her.
He stared forlornly down at his book. It wasn’t like this book was helping.
At that moment, the alarm bells started ringing. He looked toward the woman instinctively, but she was back on the cot, crouched on all fours, eyes half-shut.
Researchers poked their heads out of their doors, some curious, some alarmed. Vaughn started back down the hall; perhaps Ivana had managed to escape after all. He hadn’t seen or spoken to her since she had left Yaotel’s office; he had no i
dea what she had been up to.
But when he reached the main hallway, it was clear that something bigger was happening.
“Vaughn!” Someone shouted his name from down the hall, and he spun. It was Hueil.
“Monsters at the wall,” Hueil panted when he reached Vaughn. “Yaotel needs you, now, in the courtyard.”
Monsters? Plural? Since when did bloodbane outright attack the wall? Sure, they had a stray here or there that had followed a horse or the smell of carrion that some wild dog left nearby, but…
He hurried back to his room to retrieve his bow and arrows.
A quarter of the ragtag assortment of men and women who passed for soldiers had gathered in the courtyard by the time Vaughn arrived. Yaotel was there, barking orders, as well as a few sentries on the walls, shooting into the darkness.
They were no disciplined military unit; Vaughn didn’t need orders to know what to do. Yaotel nodded to him once, and he bypassed those standing around their formidable leader, mostly men with close combat weapons of various sorts. He knew from experience that they were the reserve. Banebringers didn’t engage bloodbane close if it could be helped; dying attempting to kill one monster only to spawn one that might be worse in its place was no help to anyone.
In a reversal of normal combat, he was the front line—he and anyone who was skilled with a ranged weapon. Unfortunately for them all, it was beyond dark outside the dim ring of light that the courtyard provided. The sky was overcast, and even though the moon was still half full, it was hidden, along with any stars. But the darkness was no enemy to Vaughn; his eyes immediately adjusted, and he could see the bloodbane clearly. There were, indeed, more than one: three, to be exact, all bloodwolves.
And they were hurling themselves against the walls. It was an eerily familiar image, considering the behavior of the crazed woman earlier. The walls held for now, but he could feel them vibrate as the gigantic beasts rammed them in concert. The walls were meant to discourage the roaming monster from getting too close to the manor, as well as to keep curious eyes at bay. But they weren’t designed to withstand a concerted attack. The bloodwolves could breach them with enough effort and time, and Vaughn didn’t intend to give them that time.
He glanced down the wall. The sentries, naturally, were having trouble hitting the wolves; one managed an arrow into the hindquarter of one wolf, but that only enraged it further. Unless there was another moonblood on duty, he was the only one up here that could see well enough to hit a target. And he was the only moonblood among the Ichtaca who could hit a target without fail regardless of the amount of daylight.
He hurried down the wall so that he was standing right over the spot where the wolves were attacking, set an arrow to his bow, and loosed it directly downward.
It pierced the skull of one of the bloodwolves. It yelped, stumbled backwards, and then lay on the ground, twitching.
The other two wolves howled and renewed their attack with vigor. He loosed another arrow, and a second wolf went down.
He reached for a third arrow, and then frowned when he didn’t feel the distinctive feathering of the aether-enhanced arrows. He glanced down at his quiver.
Damn. He was out of them. He hadn’t even thought to re-stock when he returned.
He loosed a third, normal arrow, but it was in vain. It skimmed off the thick hide of the wolf with hardly a scratch.
He turned and shouted to the nearest archer. “I need aether arrows!” The man shook his head and pointed to the ground. The earth was littered with missed arrows; all of them expended on a target the sentries had no hope of hitting in the dark.
There was a crack, and then a hiss of rubble as the wolf made some headway on damaging the wall. He cursed again and ran back down the stair to the courtyard, to be met by another man bearing a quiver of arrows. He traded it for Vaughn’s own useless one and ran off.
Vaughn was about to head back up to the wall, when he saw that the wolf had moved to the gate, presumably so it could see where Vaughn went.
They might be vicious, but they weren’t exactly intelligent.
It was snapping and snarling at the group standing just inside the bars, where one man was attempting in vain to engage it through the gate with his longsword.
Vaughn set an arrow as he ran, and then stepped right up to the gate and loosed an arrow through the bars directly into the wolf’s open mouth.
It fell, and a cheer went up.
Vaughn slung his bow onto his back and turned. Yaotel was already issuing commands. “Get those things in here and burned,” he shouted. “And gather up every arrow. Quickly!” The gates were cracked opened and a group scurried through to carry out Yaotel’s orders.
While the monsters would have been deadly had they breached the walls, the real danger was an event like this drawing the attention of someone it shouldn’t. There weren’t supposed to be scores of extra people living here, certainly not taking down monsters with such ease.
There needed to be no evidence that anything unusual had happened in the morning.
Vaughn went out with the group, helping find the arrows that had been lost. He met Yasril, an older moonblood, working with the group. “Nice work,” Yasril said as they searched together in the dark.
Vaughn grunted. The bow was as natural to him as using his own arm to reach out and grab something. As the third-born son, he had been destined to take his turn in the United Setanan army as an officer over archers, and his father would have rather gone to the abyss than see his son anything less than the best among the other noble’s sons.
Yasril, unfortunately, couldn’t hit a ten-foot tree trunk if it were five feet from his face, even though Vaughn had tried to teach him. His arm shook wildly every time he tried to draw the string; even strength training had done no good. Linette said there was something wrong with it, but Yasril wouldn’t speak of what that might be.
“That all of them?” The voice of Hueil spoke from behind.
Together, Yasril and Vaughn scanned the area. “Don’t see any more,” Vaughn said, and Yasril nodded his agreement.
“All right. Head back in. We can do a second sweep in the morning.”
They nodded and followed the party back through the gates.
“I wonder what all that was about?” Yasril asked before they parted ways.
Now that he had time to think, Vaughn was asking himself the same question. Bloodwolves, attacking the manor directly? And three? Unlike normal wolves, bloodwolves didn’t hunt in packs; they were isolated and were more likely than not to tear out each other’s throats if they ran across each other. And yet here, three had been working together.
It was as strange as the two attacks he and Ivana had survived in the woods.
But, just like the book and the woman, Vaughn had no answers.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Xambrian
Vaughn groaned when he woke and rolled over the next morning to see the book, which he had tossed aside in his room the night before, open and staring him in the face from his bedside table.
He sat up, picked it up, and stared at the meaningless words one more time, as if his lack of knowledge would suddenly disappear. He shook his head. He was going to have to tell Yaotel that he couldn’t do it. Whatever language this was, it wasn’t Xambrian, regardless of the script. And since he was the only one here who could read the Xambrian script, no one else would be able to tell him what language it was.
He set the book back down, got up, and picked up the trousers he hadn’t worn or washed since he had arrived here. They stank, and he was going to have to have them burned. But a hard lump in the pocket pressed into his hand when he picked them up, and he fished out a tiny leather pouch. He stared at it. He had completely forgotten about the note to Ivana.
Which had been written in Xambrian.
Ivana was washing her face in the wash basin, not even out of the dressing gown she wore to cover the more comfortable nightclothes she had procured as soon as she figured out who to
ask, when there was a knock on the door.
She pulled the gown closer around herself, tied it around her waist, and answered the door. It was Vaughn.
She rolled her eyes, left the door open, and went back to the basin. She had wondered how long it was going to take him to come bother her. She had lain low the past few days, trying to seem inconspicuous and unthreatening.
It was, of course, working. She doubted anyone she had spoken to other than Yaotel would guess what she really was, nor that she had any capability of finding her way out of here without being caught.
Those she interacted with had fallen into three groups. There were those who were obviously suspicious and kept their distance. Then there was the large group of those who were curious, and once they worked up the nerve to talk to her, were easily convinced that she was as innocent as their favorite sister. The third group was the hardest; a handful of the Banebringers had treated her with outright disdain. Based on some of the talk she had overheard, she gathered it was because they thought she was lesser than them; the group was led by a man named Perth.
But it had amused her more than anything else. However much commoners complained about the greed of their rulers, the propensity toward the lust for power and status was common to those born high and low. Most commoners, despite their mostly legitimate gripes, would trade their lives with the same people they spoke out against in a heartbeat, and not for some selfless reason like bettering the lot of their friends, either.
Vaughn was now standing in the doorway, watching her in the mirror as she was watching him. His dark eyes studied her face, and then flicked down to the V of skin from throat to mid-chest that her dressing gown left bare, causing a spasm of longing to shoot through her.
Annoyed, she dried her face on a towel and turned around. “Did you need something, or did you come to gawk?” she snapped.
He shifted. “How’s your leg?’
“Fine,” she said, though it still hurt some. She had seen the wound, and while it was much better, it would take time to fully heal.