Oh, you have no idea.
She tried to bring her knees up toward her chest, both to protect herself and to see how badly she might be hurt. A little stiff, but she thought it was just an impact blow. She began to push herself off the wall, but he leaned into his stick. She felt the sharp shape of it through her shirt.
“Stay down,” he said.
“Burrin–”
“No. Stay down. Stop talking,” he said. “You don’t get to talk right now. I’ve seen you. I know that you have this ability to… make people believe your stories, to tell them what they want to hear, or what you want them to hear. And they just believe you. You did it to me. To the orness.” She found it interesting that he never spoke about her as his mother, but always as the orness. Was he following ritual, or was there something else there? Burrin took his stick away from her chest long enough to point it down toward the house where she’d sent Khee. “To Isera.”
She’d never heard him say so many words in a single space before. The crack against her back still made it hard to breathe and something from the wall was digging into her hip, but she found words anyway.
“Tell me what you know,” she said. An offering, on the table. Allies.
He came back with anger. “I know you lied. The charn is made up, a child’s tale for warning away children. But I was willing to go and see because… I don’t know why. Because I am a child of this city. Because I believed. Instead, you sent us into an ambush. Why?” Another jab with his stick.
“I didn’t…” she started. But she had, hadn’t she? “Burrin, my vision was wrong. But it was not deliberate.”
“I don’t believe you. Get up,” he said. He stepped away and pushed his fist into his chest. An invitation. No, a demand.
She did not accept. She would not fight him. Not like this.
“Get. Up. I don’t care if the orness did choose you.” The end of his weapon grew slightly less controlled each time. No, not less controlled. She didn’t think there was a moment that he was not completely in control. The pressure was increasing in careful increments. If she was going to keep him from sticking that right through her chest, she needed to get him to back down.
She curled her true hand into a fist, pumped it against her chest once. Agreed to his fight. At least then there were rules. He had to let her get up, find her weapon.
She rose, clumsily, using her true hand to push her forward, trying to buy time. She gripped the red-handled blade, surprised at how grateful she was to have it tucked at her side.
“I don’t yet know why we’re fighting,” she said and she heard the fear in her voice give way to resolve. “But after I beat you, I will ask.”
She sounded more confident than she felt, but if she was honest with herself, she’d kind of been aching for a fight. Of course, she’d worked a lot of that out against the training dummy, dulling the need somewhat. But still. Burrin. For some reason, there’d always been that tension between them. She twirled the blade between her fingers. The movement was still a little stiff, but it got better the second time around.
Burrin adjusted the grip, flexing and tightening each finger over the pole, one at a time. “I will not kill you,” he said.
It was not a statement meant to placate. It was, she thought, the smartest thing he could have uttered. For a moment, she saw everything that made him the true leader of the zaffre, a good leader. Even in his anger, he was smart and he was sure. He knew that she would never beat him in this kind of hand-to-hand. She was a fine fighter when her life depended on it, but he had just made sure she knew that her life did not depend on it. And so she would pull her punches, and she would lose.
Burrin lifted his long pole. “But I may hurt you very badly.”
“Like Isera is hurt very badly?” she said. It was a risk, but it turned out to be a worthwhile one. For the mention of her name seemed to momentarily stop him. Skist. That meant she really was–
Burrin’s pause was a ploy. She realized it a moment too late, and he was on her with the side of his stick, a sharp slap against her side that clenched her teeth against her breath. She swore under her exhale.
She looked away, hoping his gaze would follow. She didn’t know if it did, but she stepped forward and underhanded her new knife so the pommel caught him in the jaw.
He was ready for her, missing most of the impact with a cant of his head. His eyes went hard and when he came for her again, it was with a quick thrust of his elbow. She’d had her eyes on his weapon, and completely missed the jab coming. It was followed by a low kick to the side of her knee. The joint buckled, spilling her back to the ground.
When she went down this time, it really did knock the breath from her. She heard something crack in her back, like a dry twig over a knee. The world spun, went black and gray. Already, her hand ached, so unused to holding a weapon.
Burrin was faster, stronger, and better trained than she was. She had to decide quickly whether to fight him or stay down. Every instinct told her to stay where she was, to let him have this one.
In the end, she pushed herself up, not to antagonize him or meet him as she might have once, but because she could tell that he needed badly to beat someone. And it might as well be her. She didn’t know who else he had at his disposal. She would give him a fair fight, even though he would win, and then she would find out what she could.
She rushed him, raising her knife in her true hand just as she fisted her hex hand, coming in with both. He moved away from the blade right into her punch in the side, as she’d hoped. She’d never hit anything with her hex hand before, and was surprised that she felt nothing; it completely absorbed the impact of the hit. So much so that she wasn’t sure how hard she’d landed her blow until he oofed air out and covered his ribs with his arm.
She stepped back, out of the way, but the length of Burrin’s weapon caught her against the side of the head, just above her neck, so hard that she saw light in her eyes. For just a moment, she was sure she was blinded, that she’d stumble forth and fall from the wall.
But then her vision returned, and Burrin was moving in on her. His pole still pointed at her, his face a grimace of trial and pain.
She changed her mind – she wasn’t going to let him beat her. On instinct, she shoved her knee against the inside of his thigh, along the muscle, and felt a moment of pleasure as his eyes went wide. He went down on a half knee, groaning. The hit had been indirect – she’d intended it to be – and he wasn’t down for very long.
He narrowed his eyes at her as he pushed himself halfway to stand. “Is this what we’re doing?” he asked. “You fight dirty.”
She felt a little bad as his jawline clenched. It passed.
“You started this, but didn’t tell me how to win. I lay that on you.”
They were not poison eater and leader of the zaffre now. Something else, something new. She didn’t know if she liked it or hated it.
They were both panting. The back of Talia’s head was pounding so hard she could feel the pressure in her teeth. She gingerly reached up to touch the curve of her head just above her spine and wasn’t surprised that her fingers came away smeared with blood.
“Maybe we should have a conversation instead,” she said.
Burrin’s lip was swelling, and fast. He sucked on it, as if to cool it and dispel the pain. “This is a conversation,” he said. She could tell by the way his words were slightly blurred together that it hurt him to speak. “Beating you is the best… kind of conversation.”
“Cachosa.” It was a word she’d heard Seild get in trouble for using. She didn’t know exactly what it meant, but she knew it was negative. She liked the way it fit into her mouth, and she liked the way it made her feel when she said it to Burrin.
His laughter was so sudden that she caught her breath. “Did Seild teach you that word?” he asked.
She nodded. “Should I even ask what it means?”
“No,” he said. “But please say it to me at the end of every fight we ever h
ave.”
“Does that mean that this one is over?”
He hesitated a long time before he gave a curt nod. “For now.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I’ve never killed anyone before, and I don’t think I want my first kill to be you. I want it to be special.”
Burrin started laughing at that, so hard he started to cough. “Really, you’ve never?” he asked.
“Never,” she said. “But I guess this also means that there will be more fights, so perhaps I’ll get my chance.”
In the silence, except for their quiet huffs of breath, they stood on the wall and looked out over the city. From here, you could almost see the entire thing. It was easy to forget the size of it when you were inside it every day.
In comparison to the stretch of the city, she felt like she and Burrin were closer than they had been. She could have reached out and touched his hand.
“Burrin,” she said. She was thinking about everything the orness had told her and about why he’d wanted to fight her. “Have none of the other poison eaters ever been wrong?”
He wiped a bit of blood from his lip. “Often,” he said. “More often than not.”
“Then why…” She spread her hands between them. His lip. Her back. Their breath. “Why all this? Or did you beat all of them up every time they were wrong?”
“You know why,” he said.
But she didn’t.
“I already told you,” he said. She expected his eyes to be hard when he said it. Angry. Instead they softened. His whole face did.
She had to shake her head, hope that he would give her more.
He cast his gaze, a slow, exaggerated movement, toward Isera’s house.
Oh, she had misunderstood so much.
“No,” he said when he saw her face. “It’s not like that between us. Not anymore. But it was. Six years or so ago.”
“Oh,” she said again, as she began to understand. So many pieces fell into place. Why he mistrusted her. Why Isera had always acted like Burrin couldn’t know about them. It wasn’t because he was leader of the zaffre; it was because she was protecting him. But of course he knew. He was smart and he paid attention.
And six years ago was a long…
Another click, a door opening.
“Oh, Seild…” she said. “Seild is…”
He didn’t have to say yes, and so he didn’t.
And your mother is a cold bitch with a blackfruit pit for a heart.
“Seild doesn’t know, does she?” She thought of the way the girl had stiffened around him.
Burrin shook his head, one movement. “And she won’t. The orness can never know she has a granddaughter.”
So he did know his mother a bit then. More than she’d thought, but not as much as he probably should. I’d bet ten shins and one of those sticks you carry that the orness is fully aware of the girl’s lineage.
His words had carried a question.
“I’ll keep your secret,” she said. No hesitation. It wasn’t a lie. She would never tell the orness. She didn’t have to. “And hers. You may trust me.”
“I don’t trust you. Not even this much.” He pinched his fingers together so that they were touching, tight, no space or light between. “But I think that Seild needs you, and Isera too, and as much as I might want to sometimes, I won’t take that from them.”
She felt obligated to give him something in return.
“You’re right, you know,” she said.
He glanced at her without turning his head. In the falling light, his face was half lit, his sharp features filled with shadow.
“I’m false,” she said. “I’m not the true poison eater.”
He put a palm to his cheek, wiggled his jaw beneath it with a wince of pain. “You are right more often than most. I’ve seen enough of them to know.”
He wasn’t telling an untruth. She’d come up with something each time, sure that she was making them up in her own brain. But had she been? There had always been something there, something beyond her. Had the poison been planting things the whole time? She felt like she couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Everything felt like it was half lie, half truth and not only could she not figure out which one something was, she couldn’t always tell one half from the other.
She opened her mouth to try to convince him otherwise. Once she’d gotten some of it out there, she had a sudden, desperate need to say the whole thing. To have someone believe her, to know her.
But he spoke before she could. “It’s my fault. I’m the one who read your vision. I’m the one who said ‘charn.’ Even though I knew it wasn’t, couldn’t be. I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself.”
It was a bigger admission than her own, somehow. And she let it sit there for a moment, trying to figure out how to handle it. The bones in her spine whispered angrily, and she stretched to alleviate the discomfort.
“My back says you have a funny way of showing that,” she said finally.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” he said.
“I’m sorry I kneed you.”
“I don’t think you are,” he said. But his tone was light.
“Are we friends now?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Burrin pushed his weapon back into the holder at his back. For a moment she thought he might extend his hand to help her up, but he merely looked at her for a moment longer.
“Go see Isera,” he said. “Since I can feel your worry from here.”
An hour ago, she would not have believed his gesture to be a kindness. Now, she nodded, so grateful that tears pricked the corners of her eyes.
She wondered how much he knew that he wasn’t saying. About her, about the poison eater, the orness, all of it. Did he know everything? She didn’t think so. There were layers of secrets, down and down. She thought Burrin had scratched beneath the very first one, but that was as far as he was willing to go.
Burrin, too, was layered. She wondered if she’d even begun to make a dent in his shell.
He wiped his hands over his outfit, slapping away the dirt, and then began to carefully make his way down the path at the far side of the wall.
“Burrin,” she called after him.
He stopped, but didn’t turn.
“Is that why you’ve made Seild afraid of you?” She saw his neck tighten, his spine pull up to stack him taller. He didn’t give her an answer. He didn’t have to. She understood well enough pushing things away from you to try to keep them safe.
“Go see her,” he said. “Unless you want to fight me again, sooner than later.”
Talia knelt there a moment longer, willing her breath to slow. Something was definitely wrong in her back, along the sides of her spine, from the tightening she felt inside each breath. When she lifted her hexed arm, she had a hard time making the fingers flex. They were stiff and slow-moving, as if they were near frozen.
Pulling herself up to sitting required quick, short breaths to ease the pain and her good hand to the ground, to help her fold. Oddly, she hadn’t heard anything from Khee – not even an update for wait – and she couldn’t see Isera’s house from this position, so she carefully pulled herself up to a crouch, and then to a stand.
From here, she couldn’t make out anyone coming or going. She had no idea if they were inside the house still, or out.
“Khee, what is happening down there?”
Still Khee was silent.
It was time to go down and see for herself.
* * *
The guards were gone from the front entrance. Rakdel opened the door at her knock. Her brown apron was splattered and dirty, the swirls of her knuckles filled with red.
“Poison Eater.” She sounded tired, but not surprised to see her.
“I just need to know if she’s all right,” Talia said. Her back hurt, her head hurt, her heart hurt. Each word was like an abrasion to those wounds.
“Come in,” she said. “She’ll be fine. You, however…” That look that only Rak
del could give her. Appraising, wordlessly requesting some action from her.
Talia looked back pointedly at the bloodied apron. “Will she?”
“Affah,” Rakdel said. “Some healing to do, but nothing out of the ordinary for her position.”
The front room was full of people. It was the first time she’d been here when it wasn’t just her and Isera. She hadn’t realized how small the space was, and how the two of them had taken up so little of it.
Members of the zaffre and others she didn’t know stood around, talking. Khee. Rynz. Ganeth, bent over a tall portable workspace, muttering to himself as he fiddled with something small and round. Seild, her face resting on the top of the workstation, watched whatever Ganeth was doing with a quiet intensity. He said something, low, and the girl shifted, then held out a long, thin wire tool to him across the table.
And Isera, oh, Isera. Standing with her back to Talia, but standing. Alive. If she wasn’t already short of breath before, she would have been at that moment. It was one thing to tell yourself you believed, and another to see your belief standing in front of you.
Talia exhaled, then groaned softly as her back shifted, sending a ping of pain down through her hips. Damn Burrin and his need to be an avenger.
Isera turned at the sound, all smile and lit-up face. “Tal–” She caught herself just in time. “Finwa, Poison Eater… oh, forget it. Everyone knows. I’m too tired and bad at pretending that I’m not glad you’re here.”
Talia couldn’t speak or move or even feel the pain in her spine. It wasn’t what Isera had said. Any other time that alone would have knocked her flat. It was how Isera looked. Not her uniform, torn and stained. Not her arm, bandaged around the elbow in a swatch of red cloth.
But her face.
Her grey eye was gone.
Instead, a hole in the side of her face. Folds of skin at the back of the hollow, surrounded by long dark lashes, top and bottom. In the very center, a glowing worm twisted and thrashed.
Like a poison dream had slipped from its cage and lumbered here, waiting until the right moment to show itself. Look what horrors you’ve wrought. Liar. False.
Numenera--The Poison Eater Page 16