Soulbinder

by Sebastien de Castell

  I tried to shake off such dark and bitter thoughts as Butelios led me through the cloister to the light of a roaring fire and the sounds of laughter.

  “Do it again, boy!” Ghilla screamed with delight as she flew through the air out over the cliff--edge, tethered by Tournam’s shadowblack ribbon around her ankle. His right arm was outstretched towards her, guiding the ebony force. The only thing that kept him from being yanked over the edge by Ghilla’s weight was Butelios rushing to his side and hanging onto him. The big man’s support was especially helpful given Tournam was using his other hand to hold the flask from which he kept drinking.

  “Idiot,” I muttered to myself.

  “Kellen?”

  I turned to find Azir standing behind me. I hadn’t heard him coming, which made me wonder if the shadowblack markings on his feet allowed him to move silently. More likely I’d simply been lost in my own thoughts.

  “I’m sorry about your squirrel cat,” the boy said. “He must’ve loved you a lot to give his life fighting that mage who was trying to kill you.”

  “Nah. He just really hated the Jan’Tep.”

  Azir looked up at me with that expression that says, I can’t tell if you’re morbidly flippant or on the verge of breaking down in tears so I’m just going to smile politely. I fumbled for something poignant to say and barely achieved banal. “He was a good business partner.”

  The boy nodded as if what I’d said made some kind of sense. Unruly dark hair flopped down over his eyes the way mine always did. I had to stop myself from reaching a hand out to sweep it back like my father used to do when I was young and he still liked me. “Are you okay?” I asked, noticing his pallor and the way he swayed back and forth on his feet. He couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen, but looked just as exhausted and world-weary as I felt.

  “Navigating shadow takes a lot out of me. I don’t usually make two trips in one day.” He glanced back at the fire. “I’m going to go back to the others now, Kellen. You should come join us. Ghilla’s going to tell one of her spirit stories. They’re the scariest things you’ll ever hear.”

  “In a minute,” I said.

  He held my gaze for a second. Just long enough to make it clear he knew I was lying, before he turned and headed off to the crowd around the bonfire.

  I found a low wall to sit on and spent a while watching them all, feeling like a spy, wondering why I hadn’t left this place already. A few of the younger students from the abbey were pleading with Tournam to let them hang out with him and the others. The Berabesq was making a show of evaluating each in turn, but it was obvious he was going to say yes. Several of the monks were there too—men and women whose stern black robes were distinctly at odds with their drunken demeanour. There’s something unsettling about watching religious aesthetes making out with each other. “What the hell kind of place is this?” I wondered aloud.

  “A truly dark and terrible domain,” Diadera said, coming up behind me. Clearly I wasn’t at my most observant, because she’d surprised me even though I’d been trying to spot her ever since I’d arrived. She handed me a leather flask. “Drink,” she commanded.

  I’ve never liked being told what to do, so I tried to give it back to her. “Not if it’s the same stuff that’s got the rest of you acting like fools.”

  She took a swig from the flask, then tossed it back to me, forcing me to catch it. “Drink.”

  “I told you, I don’t—”

  She took my arm and leaned against my shoulder, then gestured with her free hand at the crowd by the fire. “You are wise to resist my offering, young spellslinger. See what foul and sacrilegious acts these would-be demons perform.” The mocking tone was at odds with the remarkably convincing formal speech she’d slipped into. “Witness the abhorrent gall with which they choose not only to suffer a sickness of their own making—one that will surely destroy them if some fine Jan’Tep mage does not get to them first—yet do they also conspire to steal brief snatches of solace on their way to their rightful doom.”

  “Funny. You’re not afraid of the posse that’s coming here?”

  She dropped the act. “I’m terrified, Kellen. We all are. That’s why everyone here but you is doing the only sensible thing left to do in this situation.” She pressed the flask into my stomach. “Drink.”

  I flipped open the stopper with my thumb and leaned back to find out what was so magical about this stuff. The taste of warm peach tumbled down my throat, smooth at first, then delivering a kick that would’ve had me falling on my arse if I hadn’t been so very determined not to embarrass myself in front of her.

  “Well?” she asked. “Has the uncontrollable urge for licentiousness taken you over yet?”

  I took another swig before saying, “Fine. I get it. I’m an idiot.”

  She took the flask from me then leaned up on her toes and whispered into my ear. “No, you’re just a very sad boy who badly needs to learn to have fun.”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but my friend is dead and there’s a war coven led by my own father coming to kill all these people! Maybe this isn’t the best time for—”

  “This is exactly the time for those things,” she said, not giving an inch of ground. She nodded towards the others. “You think they’re being childish and irresponsible? Even before we came back to the abbey, we were all convinced we were going to die at the hands of that lunatic Tas’diem. No. Worse than that. Do you have any idea what he would’ve done to us if you hadn’t tricked him like you did?”

  In fact I had no idea what Tas’diem’s intentions were, but I could imagine they weren’t pleasant. Diadera tapped a finger against the shadowblack freckles on her cheeks. “How are we supposed to live with this disease, Kellen, fighting every day to hold on to our souls even as the abbot makes us go out there to risk our lives protecting the same innocent, upstanding people who want to see us dead?”

  “I didn’t mean …” I prised her fingers from my arm. They were digging into the muscle painfully. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? I’m just not used to all this.”

  Over near the fire, Tournam’s black ribbons held Ghilla high up in the air on a throne made from his shadowblack while she regaled the others with some sort of ghost story. He finally settled her back on solid ground and she gave him a playful punch on the arm before running off to join some of the younger ones. A woman in monk’s robes sauntered over to embrace Tournam, pressing her lips to his. A second monk—this one a man—joined them. Tournam let go of the woman and began kissing him. Strange behaviour for a Berabesq elite. The religious class of his people frowned on such behaviour, usually expressing their disapproval with the crack of a whip outside a temple.

  “It’s kissing, Kellen,” Diadera whispered in my ear. “Are you really that bothered by it?”

  I took the flask back from her and drank again, mostly because I wasn’t sure what to say. Finally I tried, “I couldn’t care less, to be honest.”

  “Liar.” She put her hands on my chest. Every nerve lit up, silently begging her not to take them away. “I can feel the tension in your muscles,” she said. “Watching the others having fun, seeing people letting their guard down, it really bothers you, doesn’t it?” She sounded genuinely curious.

  Ferius Parfax, one of the best liars I’d ever met—mostly because she could do it without actually telling an untruth—had taught me the “time-honoured art of confabulation,” so it wasn’t as if I couldn’t come up with a way to get out of answering. But she had also warned that while it’s sometimes necessary to deceive others, an Argosi never, ever deceives themselves.

  “We’re going to figure this out, Kellen,” Diadera said, mistaking my hesitation for concern about the spell bridge. She leaned into me. “You, me, the others … We’ll find a way to hold off the posse.”

  “What good will I be? I’m not an inspiritor like you or an alacratist like Suta’rei. Whatever abilities I might have had, my grandmother made sure to lock them inside me when she banded me in sha
dow.”

  “So?” She turned me around to face her. “Aren’t you supposed to be an outlaw?”

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “I’d always heard outlaws were good at picking locks.” She reached up a hand and traced the black lines circling my left eye. “You just have to figure out how to turn the dials. Until then …” Her hand slid down my cheek, my shoulder, my arm. Her fingers intertwined with mine. “Kissing’s really not a bad way to pass the time.” A few of the shadowblack freckles on her cheeks drifted from her face to dance in the air between us. “I’ve heard that physical affection between those attuned to the same ethereal plane can be rather astonishing.”

  The flickers of firelight glinted off her lips. I could smell her breath—the hint of wine and cloves from the drink. Her cheeks were pale without the freckles, and the green of her eyes seemed even brighter than usual. The liquor had worked its way from my belly to my brain and was getting ready to take over. In about three seconds you’re going to kiss Diadera, my mind informed me. Then you’re going to lose yourself in anything and everything she offers, because, right or wrong, for however long it lasts, it’s going to feel a lot better than loneliness.

  Her face was close to mine, the tips of our noses brushing against each other as our lips slowly but surely began to bridge the gap. She wasn’t forcing the issue, but waiting for me. All I had to do was lean in, just a fraction of an inch more, and all this pain would disappear.

  Suddenly I was floating a foot above the ground, only this wasn’t a metaphor for finally kissing Diadera. Strong hands were lifting me up. Annoyingly familiar ones. “Are you all right, Kellen?” Butelios asked, still holding me off the ground. “I saw you falling and felt compelled to provide assistance.”

  “Butelios, you arse!” Diadera said angrily. “Put him down!”

  “The boy’s exhausted,” he replied, flipping me over so that he was now carrying me like a child in his arms. He ignored the shadowblack fireflies buzzing around us, apparently unconcerned for his safety or my pride. “Also, he’s drunk. You can corrupt him tomorrow, if that’s what he desires when he’s sober.”

  With that, he turned and carried me back through the cloisters to the abbey towers, leaving me completely unsure as to whether I should beat him senseless or thank him.

  45

  The Price of Sleep

  Being bounced along in the arms of a guy no more than a year or two older than you are has to be one of the more humiliating experiences a young man can be dealt in life. So it says something that I was so exhausted that the first word out of my mouth as Butelios carried me through the cloisters was, “Comfy.”

  The big man grinned down at me. “Well, I’m not going to hold you like this all night, so enjoy it while you can.”

  I gazed blearily ahead, towards one of the towers at the far end of the abbey. “Where are you taking me?” I asked.

  “To my bed.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh …

  “Listen,” I said, aiming for a serious tone but slurring the word atrociously. I guess I was pretty drunk by then. “I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but I’m not … I don’t sleep with men.”

  He gave me a thoughtful look before asking, “Have you ever tried it?”

  “No! I mean … No, it’s just, I prefer women.”

  “Ah.” Another thoughtful look. “How many?”

  “What?”

  “How many women have you slept with?”

  “Well, none so far, but …”

  He paused, standing there beneath the arch at the end of the cloister. “Then how do you know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you prefer sleeping with women. If you haven’t tried it with either, then how do you know? Maybe you’d like men better.”

  “I …” My brain—never all that quick in such matters to begin with—was at a considerable disadvantage from too little sleep and too much liquor. Butelios’s logic seemed unassailable. “Look,” I said finally, “if it’s all right with you, I think I’m going to trust my instincts on this one and try it with a girl first.” Like an idiot, I added, “If that’s okay.”

  He bit at his lower lip, still standing there, still holding me in his arms. “Oh.”

  Not knowing what to do, I patted his arm awkwardly. “I’m sorry, Butelios.”

  He nodded, but didn’t speak. His lip started to quiver a little. I felt his arms shake. I honestly thought he was about to cry when all of a sudden his mouth opened wide, his head fell back and he let out the loudest, deepest, most rumbling roar of laughter I’d ever heard.

  Loud enough that it got my brain working again. “You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”

  He stopped chortling just long enough to say, “‘Screwing’ with you? No, Kellen, that’s not screwing. Are you sure you don’t want me to …” But he couldn’t even get the jibe out because by then he was bent over double with laughter and I had to get my feet down before he dropped me.

  By the time he had himself under control, tears were streaming down his cheeks. “Ah, Kellen Argos. I have decided that you and I are going to be good friends.” He clapped me on the shoulder, and had to then grab on to keep me from stumbling from the force of the blow. “Yes, I think we are proper friends now.”

  In the brief moment of silence that followed, I could just hear the sounds of the others back by the fire. I wondered how Diadera had decided to celebrate, given my abrupt departure. “You’ve got a funny idea of friendship, Butelios.”

  He caught me staring back the way we’d come. “You mean Diadera? I believe you will thank me for my intervention soon enough.”

  The small part of my brain whose job it is to keep me from getting myself killed even when I’m tired flared to wakefulness. “Why would you say that? Does she mean me harm?”

  “No, Kellen. Diadera likes you—a great deal, from what I can see, though I’m not such an expert in these matters.” He gave me a gentle push and resumed walking to the tower.

  “Then why was it so important to stop us from … from whatever she had in mind?”

  He didn’t answer at first, and we walked in silence to the entrance of one of the towers. He pressed a hand to the door and swung it open. We’d wound our way up a staircase to the second floor before he stopped and said, “Diadera knows how sad you are, Kellen. She can see it filling you up inside, drowning you in sorrow. She just wants to make you feel joy instead.”

  His sideways explanations were beginning to annoy me. “What’s wrong with a little joy?”

  He opened the door to a modest room with a simple bed and a small desk. “This is my chamber,” he said. “You will sleep, and I will stand guard outside. I will weep tears of shadow for you, for what you have lost, and on my oath they will keep any who wish you ill from gaining entrance.”

  “Is someone planning to attack me?”

  Not that you haven’t given people plenty of reason to.

  “No one in the abbey means you harm, and it wouldn’t matter if they did. I will guard you.”

  “Then why—”

  “Diadera is wrong, Kellen. With my tears I have seen into the shadows that bound you to your friend. I know what Reichis meant to you. You don’t want to feel happy right now. You want to feel safe.”

  Safe.

  The word sounded foreign to my ears, like the name of a place others had described to me but which I’d never seen myself. When was the last time I’d felt safe?

  For a long time I stood there watching Butelios, searching his face for signs of deception. He tolerated my scrutiny without flinching or shying away. After a while I walked past him, into his room, my every step slow and unsteady, as if my body was finally accepting that it needed sleep so badly that simply falling to the floor would be a welcome release. I collapsed onto his bed and heard the door begin to close behind me. Before it shut and I lost myself in slumber, I managed to say, “Thank you, my friend.”

  46

 
; The Visitor

  I slept like the dead. No dreams, no nightmares, no strange encounters with my sister. After almost two years of living as an outlaw, of never—ever—feeling safe enough to do more than doze in fits and starts, each punctuated by a sharp spike of terror at every unexpected sound or unwanted thought, I truly, deeply, slept.

  For about two hours.

  Something soft brushed against my lips. Even unconscious, several possibilities presented themselves. Most pleasant among them was that Diadera had snuck in to venture further down the road we’d barely set foot on earlier that night. Butelios had said his tears would protect me from anyone who wished me harm after all. He hadn’t specified what would happen if someone wanted to slip into bed with me. Unless he’d decided to … No. Though I’d only known him a couple of days, there was something about him that made me trust him.

  Hell, even outlaws have to have faith in people once in a while.

  That silky sensation against my mouth was still there, gently teasing me back to consciousness. Not someone’s lips though, more like sleek cloth. Not a gag or robe either, but a swathe of something smooth settling over the bottom half of my face. I reached up to brush it away. My fingers touched the fabric, and suddenly it became hard as iron. It was as if molten ore had been poured over my face and made to cool instantly, becoming rigid. Impenetrable.

  I thrashed around in a panic, desperate to tear off the iron muzzle but unable to get a grip on it. A forearm pressed down on my chest just below my neck. Strong, but not heavy or thick. Most likely a woman. Guessing where my assailant’s face must be, I reached up to tear at it. My fingers met a surface too stiff and smooth to be skin. A mask then. I slid my hand lower, aiming for her neck, only to have jaws clamp around my wrist. Jaws with big teeth. I tried to pull away, but the creature held on, not crushing my bones, but biting just hard enough to make it clear that was a distinct possibility should I keep resisting.

  “Relax, Kellen,” a voice whispered. “You’re perfectly safe.”

  Safe? That word had thus far failed to fulfil its promise.