The sheggam slowly turned back to Tharadis.
Before he even saw the sheggam move toward him, he felt its wide, bony fist hammer into his face, again smacking his head against the wall. The blow brought pain washing through his entire body, so excruciating it made him want to retch.
The sheggam grabbed Tharadis by the left wrist, dragged him across the floor, and then pressed Tharadis up against one of the support posts with his arm extended up. At first, Tharadis had no idea what was happening and was too dazed to do anything about it.
The sheggam reversed its grip on the wood file, drew its arm back, and stabbed hard.
Pain erupted in Tharadis’s left hand.
This was worse than his head smacking the wall, worse than any physical pain he had ever experienced. He screamed so loud his throat burned. Through his blurred vision, he looked up to see the file buried deep into the meat of his palm, the flat of its rasping surface running up and down, grinding against the bones of his hand. Blood pumped out of the wound and down his wrist. Half of the file’s length was buried into the support post, pinning his hand to it. There was no way it was coming out.
Tharadis felt the sheggam’s breath as it leaned closer. “Don’t worry,” it said, its voice guttural yet calm. “As long as you stay standing, you won’t rip your hand in half.” Tharadis knew it was telling the truth. A wound like this couldn’t handle his body weight. The agony threatened to buckle his knees. He had to lock them to keep the file from ruining his hand further.
The sheggam picked up Shoreseeker and stepped in front of Tharadis, gingerly holding the sword in front of itself like an offering, though it was it clear wouldn’t give the sword back to Tharadis. The sheggam stood just outside of Tharadis’s reach, the light from the front room framing its bulk.
“Now you know the truth,” it said, lips peeling back from its teeth. “Now you know pain. Let it pierce the veil of lies. Describe it to me.” The sheggam’s crimson eyes were hungry. “Describe your pain, your truth, to me.”
After the savagery he’d seen, Tharadis wasn’t expecting such eloquence from a sheggam. He had thought of them as little more than beasts, even the ones that carried weapons. Perhaps many of them were.
This one was clearly much more than that.
Still, even as the sweat dripping down his forehead stung his eyes, Tharadis matched the beast glare for glare. “It … hurts.”
The sheggam squeezed its fists around Shoreseeker. The hand holding the blade began to drip blood, but the sheggam only had eyes for Tharadis. “You won’t be able to stand if I sever the tendons in your heel.”
“Why?” Tharadis could barely get the word out through the agony ripping through him. He didn’t care about the answer, but the longer they talked, the longer he lived. And the longer he lived, the better his chances of getting out of this—he hoped. “Why come here? Why kill all these people?”
“Because the song demands it.” The sheggam tested Shoreseeker’s edge with a claw. It grunted as if impressed.
“What song? What are you talking about?” More fiery pain shot through his arm as Tharadis shifted slightly to glance up at his hand. The sight of it was almost as horrifying as the pain itself. It was all Tharadis could do to keep from vomiting. Still, he forced himself to look. If the handle were gone, he might have been able to slide his hand off the file. If the sheggam didn’t get bored of their conversation and cut him down first. Or if Tharadis didn’t pass out first. But there was no way to remove the handle quickly and without attracting the sheggam’s notice. Think, he told himself, as if the command could push back the encroaching shroud of unconsciousness. Think!
“The song of pain.” The sheggam’s breath hissed between its bared teeth. “Pain is the loneliest thing in the world. Every hurt, every agonizing sensation, seeks—no, demands—companionship.
“The song of pain is a single screeching noise that blisters your ears with no end,” the sheggam continued. “The pain of others is like … harmony. Without that harmony, the song can drive you mad. The ferals you’ve no doubt seen,” the sheggam added, gesturing to the door, “running around without thought, are doing everything they can to create that harmony. The need of it boils their blood. Even in the act of killing, those brief moments of pain felt by their victims before death are sweet relief from the song of pain. With enough blood on their teeth, perhaps the ferals will become more civilized.” The tone of its voice held no hint of irony.
Tharadis watched as it approached, racking his brain for another question, anything to buy himself more time. But he could barely focus beyond the pain in his hand. It was all he could to keep his knees from buckling and destroying his hand completely. Blackness encroached at the edges of his vision.
The sheggam’s face moved close to Tharadis’s, until there were only a few inches between them. He could feel its hot breath on his face. Beyond the sheggam, Tharadis though he caught a flicker of movement—was that the shop’s front door opening? The sheggam didn’t seem to notice it.
“Healing yourself is possible.” The sheggam tapped the flat of Shoreseeker’s blade against Tharadis’s chest. Eyelids drooping, Tharadis glanced down at the sword. With its tip, the sheggam lifted his chin until he was looking into those crimson eyes again. “I can change you. Make you better. Stronger. You won’t die from old age or disease. Predators will cower before you because you will be the predator.”
Tharadis struggled to remain conscious. He now knew that if he passed out, death would be the best thing that could happen to him. “I won’t …”
Again, something behind the sheggam caught Tharadis’s eye—someone standing in the doorway.
A wide-eyed girl, black hair falling over her shoulders and a string of wooden eggs painted like raccoons clutched to her chest.
Involuntarily, Tharadis sucked in a lungful of air.
Nina. No.
The sheggam saw something in his eyes and spun towards the door. Nina stepped back until she bumped into the door jamb as tears suddenly rolled down her cheeks.
In his final moments, Tharadis was going to watch his daughter die.
The World Pattern had taken so much from him already—it had fractured his family, forcing Tharadis to kill his own brother. But worst of all, it had taken the one person he loved more than anything.
The World Pattern’s only redemption was giving him Nina. She was more than just a reminder of Serena; she was Nina. His daughter. Though he dearly loved the rest of his family, they weren’t a part of him like Nina was. She was the whole world to him.
A hand was such a small cost to save the world.
Sudden clarity of purpose cut through the haze of pain, sharpening his senses. Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Tharadis felt the bones in his hand slide apart and splinter as he yanked his hand down. The teeth of the wood file ripped through his flesh. Tharadis noticed this with detachment, as if it were merely some grotesque painting he were viewing and not the ruination of his own hand. The sheggam started to turn, Shoreseeker gripped tightly in its fist. Tharadis could see alarm registering in its eyes.
Speed and surprise were paramount. Tharadis braced himself against the post, coiling himself like a spring. With all the strength in his body, he launched forward. To Tharadis’s heightened awareness, the sheggam moved so slowly it seemed nearly frozen. It was almost laughable how easily Tharadis spun under the sheggam’s sword arm and pressed his back against the sheggam’s side. In that same fluid motion, Tharadis hooked his hands over the sheggam’s wrist. Fresh pain roared through his ruined hand, but it was a distant sensation, as if it were happening to some phantom limb.
Then he jerked his hands down as hard as he could.
The sounds of breaking bones and ripping tendons filled the air, but only a moment before the sheggam’s roar of pain drowned them out.
Elbow bent at a horrifying angle, the sheggam’s fingers spasmed and went limp. Shoreseeker slid from their grasp.
Before it touched the floor, Tharad
is snatched Shoreseeker out of the air, sweeping it around in a wide arc. The blade met chain mail, then flesh, muscle, bone, and organs, before exploding out of the sheggam’s back in an eruption of gore.
The sheggam’s top half fell to the floor a moment before the bottom half.
Nina stared at him, mouth agape.
Tharadis smiled faintly at her, then fell to his knees, dropping Shoreseeker to the floor. He put his hands out to brace himself, but when his ruined left hand hit the floorboards, whatever surge of energy that had helped him save his daughter vanished, replaced by screaming agony. He gritted his teeth, panting, sweat dripping from his hair as he watched the sheggam’s blood pool around his hands.
He didn’t notice the white mist flowing out of the sheggam’s wound until it started pouring into his own.
Chapter 69: Deception's End
Tharadis yanked his hand back, head swimming as he staggered to his feet. The white mist coming out of the sheggam’s wound drifted around its body, yet a moment before it almost seemed as if it had been alive. He hoped that he had imagined the mist rushing into his mangled hand, but he knew what he had seen.
Tharadis tried to step away from the mist and staggered, catching himself on a workbench and scattering tools. His head pounded. Bile rose in his throat.
“Daddy?”
He turned toward the voice, blinking blearily. Nina stood there, eyes as wide as saucers.
Nina. She was safe. He smiled again, and as well as he could without collapsing, beckoned her closer. “Come here, Neensy. Stay away from the thing on the floor.”
By the look of horror on her face as she stared at the dead sheggam, the warning was unnecessary. Swallowing audibly, she edged towards Tharadis. When she was close, Tharadis eased himself to a squat and reached out with his good hand to brush a strand of hair from her face. He could see the fear in her eyes as she looked down at his hand.
“I’m okay, Neensy,” he said. “I’ll be okay.” He wasn’t so sure about that, now that he thought about it. The room felt like it was floating on the ocean during a storm. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting. “Can you bring me Shoreseeker, Neensy? Be careful. It’s sharp. And don’t touch the mist.” Nina nodded. Tharadis closed his eyes and felt himself slipping off before she came back and prodded him with a finger.
He opened his eyes again and smiled his gratitude as she handed him Shoreseeker. With her help, he cut a strip of cloth from his tunic and wrapped it tightly around his left hand. Just as he was about to tie off the makeshift bandage, he froze. “Neensy,” he said, voice dropping to a whisper. “What did you call me just now?” He kept his eyes fixed on the bandage.
Her reply was longer in coming, her voice as quiet as his own. “Daddy.”
“Why?” The word choked him. “Why don’t you call me Uncle Tharadis, like you always do?”
“Daddies shouldn’t lie to their daughters.”
Tharadis finally met her gaze then. Tears fell from her eyes, and he found his own eyes filling with them.
Without wasting another moment, he gathered her up in his arms, squeezing her tight, stroking her hair. Her skinny arms squeezed him back. That moment was theirs and theirs alone. The world around them fell away, and it was just the two of them together. My daughter.
Our daughter.
With her in his arms, he wept as the weight of those lies he had carried fell away, shed like the terrible burdens they were. He hadn’t realized just how much the lies had crushed him. In that moment, he realized that bearing them had been almost as hard as bearing the loss of Serena.
No longer.
“I’m sorry, Neensy.” He could feel each of her tiny sobs as she pressed herself hard against his chest. “I wanted so much to tell you for so long. I wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t to protect you. I hope you forgive me.”
She nodded against him, unspeaking.
“How did you know?” he asked.
Nina stepped back and wiped at her face, moving back only far enough to hold her raccoon family between them. “I don’t think she meant to,” Nina said, “but mommy told me.”
Tharadis felt the hairs on the back of neck stand up. When Nina saw the look on his face, she quickly lifted one of the raccoons to show him. “See? Here. This is the daddy raccoon. She painted it to look like you.”
Tharadis made a show of studying the raccoon, but it didn’t look any different from the others, except for being a bit larger than the ones he assumed were the raccoon children. “So, I look like a raccoon, do I?” She grinned and he mussed her hair. “Well, you must be smarter than me. I don’t think I could’ve figured it out.” He didn’t think Nina was telling him the whole story, but it didn’t matter. She was here, she was safe, and he wouldn’t have to lie to her anymore.
Tharadis was reluctant to release her, but they couldn’t stay here any longer. In the back of this shop it was almost possible to forget what was going on outside—but simply hiding and hoping wasn’t going to save them. The sheggam’s corpse across the room was reminder enough of that. Tharadis stood and flexed his wounded hand experimentally. A line of dark red running down his palm stained the bandage, but the bleeding had stopped, and the pain was a fraction of what it was moments ago.
That alarmed him.
The he noticed a feeling lurking with the pit of his stomach—a promise of healing. Of strength.
Of pain.
He had read First Night, Last Night; he knew what that promise meant. He was infested with shegasti.
The Knights of the Eye used small pieces of sheggam bone, usually pierced through their skin and hidden under their clothes, to invest themselves with shegasti power, giving them the ability that gave them their name—the capacity to sense nearby sheggam, as if with a unseen eye. Now, though, these bones were ancient, most dating back to the time when sheggam bones were harvested in battle, and Tharadis suspected that much of their power was already spent. And compared to the white mist, the raw, distilled essence of shegasti, even the freshest of sheggam bones were dilute in their power.
He had seen how drawing on that power had changed Dransig. And Dransig had been sipping from a pinhole; if Tharadis were to try the same, it would be like standing under a waterfall.
He knew he could heal his hand with his power. And he also knew that Nina’s life depended on him resisting the temptation.
“Nina, listen to me.” Tharadis crouched down and took her by the shoulders. “We can’t stay here. I think we’ll be safer with the caravan outside the city. That’s where Chad will be waiting for us.”
Nina nodded and he continued.
“I’m not going to lie to you.” Anymore, he added silently. “It’s going to be very dangerous.”
He could tell she was scared, but also doing her best to be brave. “Okay,” she said.
“We’ll have to go very fast, and I don’t want to lose you ever again. So I’m going to carry you on my back. When I do, I want you to hang on tight, but not too tight. Can you do that?”
She nodded and he brushed her hair out of her eyes. He smiled, hoping that this wasn’t the last chance he got to see her face. Escaping the city was going to be harder than he let on. “One more thing, Neensy.”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happens, don’t open your eyes.”
Chapter 70: Flight
Uncle Tharadis—no, her father, she reminded herself—crouched down so Nina could climb onto his back. After checking to make sure the Raccoon Family was securely tied around her neck, she stepped on his thigh and climbed up. As he stood, she squeezed her knees tight against his side to keep them from shaking too much.
He turned his head until their noses were almost touching, a small grin on his face. “You okay back there?” She nodded and he gave her a reassuring pat on her arm. “Remember what I told you?”
“Yeah,” Nina said. “Don’t open my eyes.”
Not that she had needed the warning. She’d already seen much more than she’d ever
wanted to.
“Okay, then,” her father said. “Let’s go.”
Nina buried her face between his neck and her own arm, squeezing her eyes shut.
Her world was darkness now.
She heard her father step through the sticky puddle in the middle of the room. Nina shuddered. With her eyes closed, sounds seemed so much louder. She felt as much as heard Tharadis wipe his sword on something—the monster’s body, she supposed. Just like the sounds, she was much more aware of his movements as she felt the flex of his muscles. It was a comforting feeling, knowing that even as she closed her eyes to everything around her, her daddy was doing everything he could to protect her. She felt much less alone than she had before, with only her mother’s voice for company. Her father was here and he was real. He would keep her safe.
“I love you, daddy,” she said, voice choked.
He paused to squeeze both of her hands in his bandaged one and rubbed his thumb along her wrist. “I love you too, Neensy.” He hooked his free hand under her leg. Floorboards creaked as he started forward. He halted as Nina sensed a change in the light. They were outside.
Tharadis turned his head, first left, then right. Even with her face pressed against her arm, she could still smell the foul stench of the street, something between a privy and a butcher shop. Even squeezing her face tighter against her arm didn’t stifle all the smells.
She hoped they didn’t have far to go.
Tharadis turned left and started jogging.
His were the only footsteps Nina heard, but other noises filled the air. Distant shouts, mostly, and crackling fire. No matter how she positioned her face, her ear was still exposed. She could hear everything as if were happening right next to her. Even though the smoke stung Nina’s nose whenever they passed through it, she was glad for it. It overpowered all the other smells and made her forget about them, if only for a few moments.
It was strange. The streets, which had been so crowded just hours before, filled with talking and laughter and merchants arguing with customers, were empty now. Abandoned. Nina could almost imagine that everyone was in bed, sleeping peacefully. She wished she could imagine it.
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