The Thief Lord's Son (The Eastern Slave Series Book 3)

by Victor Poole

  "I know what you are," Ajalia told her. "And if you test me, I will destroy you."

  Lilleth stared at Ajalia, her eyes wide and childish.

  "That isn't fair," she repeated, and Ajalia's hand shot out, and gripped the roots of Lilleth's brown hair, just above the ear. Ajalia put her lips close to that ear.

  "Do you want to die?" Ajalia asked softly. Lilleth was still for a very long time; Ajalia waited, and thought that she could hear the Thief Lord's wife thinking it over.

  "I want Delmar," Lilleth said.

  Ajalia's knife was in her hand before she thought of drawing it; rage was building in her. She was no longer afraid of Delmar's mother, but she was angry for what Lilleth had done to the pure heart in Delmar.

  "Stop!" Lilleth whispered, but her voice was relaxed. Ajalia cut deeply at the brown hair, and then she disfigured the woman's chin and eyes. Ajalia had not marked a slave for years; she had not needed to since the affair of the purple silks. Philas used to tease her about the purple silks, she remembered, and the slave she had cut into. Long pieces of hair came away in Ajalia's hand; she thrust the locks into Lilleth's lap, and the tall woman took them into her fists, like a child picking up daisies.

  When she had finished, she stepped back, and looked on the Thief Lord's wife. Lilleth sat on the white road like a great toddler, her fingers toying with her severed hair, and blood seeping freely down her cheeks. The white silk wrap was stained scarlet with her blood. Ajalia saw that the tall woman would not cry out; she saw that the tall woman was possessed of a kind of darkness that could not be subdued.

  "Will you kill her?" Bain asked. Ajalia looked around at the young boy.

  "You said you'd come back," she said.

  "Are you insane?" Lilleth asked with a soft giggle. "You play with knives," the Thief Lord's wife said, "and you speak to those who are not there."

  "She can see me, too," Bain told Ajalia, nodding at Lilleth.

  "How?" Ajalia asked.

  "She helped to drive me out," Bain said. "I used to be alive."

  "And now you aren't?" Ajalia asked him.

  "Now I have no mortal substance. I can't return," Bain said. "I am spirit now."

  "She helped to drive me out," Lilleth repeated in a singsong.

  "She will attack you now," Bain told Ajalia, "unless you finish her."

  "Will Delmar forgive me, if I kill her?" Ajalia asked Bain.

  "I don't know," Bain said easily. "I don't know Delmar."

  Ajalia lifted her knife, which she had held easily at her side, and cut towards the Thief Lord's wife's throat. Lilleth, Ajalia saw, had been waiting for her. The tall woman's hand flashed up like an iron manacle, the blood around her eyes gleaming wildly in the darkness. Lilleth did not cry out, or move, but she held Ajalia's wrist hard.

  "Help me," Ajalia said to Bain. Bain stepped nearer to the two, and Lilleth, Ajalia saw, did see the boy, for she flinched hard away, releasing Ajalia's wrist, and scuttling backwards like a crab. Bain stepped behind Lilleth, and the tall woman froze, her whole body twisting away from the boy. Ajalia deftly moved to the curve where Lilleth's artery pulsed, and spilled her blood with a movement like the draining of a pig. Lilleth went stiff, her eyes wide in shock, and in a wave of revulsive recognition, Ajalia saw an echo of her mother in the tall woman's expression. Ajalia stepped back, and let the tall woman's body fall forward, a death rattle sounding over the stones. When Ajalia looked for Bain, he was gone. Ajalia gathered the Thief Lord's wife up into her arms, and stumbled with her into the great hall of the dragon temple. Only luck, or the grace of some gods, Ajalia thought, could have prevented some curious neighbor from watching the whole scene. The Thief Lord's wife had screamed once or twice, she remembered, when she had first arrived, and any person at a window or balcony could have observed the knife, and the quickly spreading blood.

  Adrenaline pumped like blistering fire through Ajalia's veins; she carried the Thief Lord's wife to the shadowy basin of poison tree juice, and lay her in the edges of the pool. She put her hands on either side of the tall woman's shoulders, and shoved her head and torso into the thick black fluid. The poison juice began to eat away at the tall woman's face and neck; bubbles appeared in the black fluid, and steam rose up with a belch. Ajalia pushed Lilleth's hips into the surface of the black substance, and then lay her legs and feet all the way within the pool. Without waiting to watch the Thief Lord's wife sink like a dying ship into the shallow circle, Ajalia strode to the shelf where she had laid the bowl and cloth that Ullar had given her for cleaning the witch's blood, and carried them swiftly to the poison tree juice. She scooped a generous portion of the thick stuff into the bowl, and then ran to the pump and bucket, and ladled water into the bowl. She went out again through the long, echoing hall, and prayed that her servants would not awaken.

  She came to the steps, and hissed in displeasure. A wide pool of blood, and a long, smearing trail of it lay all along the street before the steps, and came like a drizzling waterfall up the steps where Ajalia had carried the dead woman.

  "It's all right," Bain said to her, as she knelt and began to scrub at the road. "I've made sure everyone is asleep."

  "You vanish a lot," Ajalia told Bain, and he smiled.

  "It takes effort, to appear so that you can see me," he explained. "When it doesn't matter, I don't try."

  "Why are you here now?" she asked. He shrugged.

  "I'm lonely," he said.

  "Why aren't you just dead?" Ajalia asked.

  "I'm not dead," Bain said. "I'm trapped."

  Ajalia moved on her knees, and scooped more of the watered-down poison juice into the blood, where it hissed and frothed like venomous soup. The water and black liquid had sloshed together thoroughly in her walk through the long hall, and she dipped the rag generously into the mixture now.

  "Trapped how?" she asked, and wrung out the rag over the bowl. Her hands tingled at the contact of the juice; she still did not understand how the poison tree juice could decimate all things so thoroughly within the confines of the garbage pit, and not harm anything but filth and dirt when taken out and thinned with water. Eccsa's mother, she remembered, had called it magic, but Ajalia did not trust what she could not explain. She was grateful, however, for the potent way in which the mixture ate up the blood stains, and for the aromatic steam that rose up above the vanishing mess.

  Bain watched her work, his lips shoved to one side.

  "You missed a spot, over there," he said helpfully. Ajalia ignored him, and scrubbed at the spreading pool.

  "I wasn't going to kill her," Ajalia said.

  "I know," Bain said. "No one ever does mean to kill. That's part of why humans are so evil."

  Ajalia glanced up at the boy, her lips curving into a half-smile.

  "We're evil because we won't kill?" she asked. Bain met her gaze without blinking. The boy's face was solemn and white in the moonlight.

  "You tolerate corruption," he said. "When you find a predator, you pass it by, and by so doing, give it leave to feed. You contribute to the darkness by your blindness to it."

  "You speak as though you were not human," Ajalia observed. She pulled the bowl to the side, and crawled to the part of the street where the blood smeared up the steps.

  "You missed that part," Bain said again.

  "Then you clean it," Ajalia said without looking up. Bain smiled at her, and then wandered to the bowl. Ajalia saw him dip two fingers into the substance; when his skin touched the black juice, the dark liquid in the bowl changed to a brilliant white. "What is that?" she asked. She watched Bain cross to the place he had pointed to, and wipe his wet fingers over the blood. The blood rose up into the air with a violent hiss, and left behind a damp gray smudge on the stone. Ajalia tossed her wet rag to the boy. Bain caught the fabric, and slopped up the gray mess.

  "Are you human?" she asked him. A strange niggling sense of darkness was in her belly; she felt as though she ought to have met this boy before, or that she ought to have known of hi
s kind of being. "What are you?" she asked. Bain brought the rag back to Ajalia, and handed it to her. Ajalia kept her fingers from touching Bain's hand; she took the rag, and moved it firmly over the blood on the steps.

  "I didn't mean to kill her," Ajalia said again.

  "You're going to feel guilty now, aren't you?" Bain asked.

  "No," Ajalia lied. Bain laughed, and pointed at her.

  "Your face turns green on the inside, when you tell a lie," Bain said. Ajalia kept her eyes on the steps, and the smears of blood.

  "What does that mean?" she asked.

  "You know things that you don't want to see," Bain told her.

  "And you're some spirit being now?" Ajalia asked.

  "Yes," Bain said. "My mortal self was burned away, and destroyed. I don't have a human self anymore." He watched Ajalia wash the blood. "You're like me," he said suddenly.

  "I'm alive," Ajalia said quickly.

  "Not inside, you're not," Bain told her. "You're as absent as I am, from reality, from the life that everyone else sees. You see the real things. Delmar does, too, doesn't he?" he asked her. "That's why you like him."

  "You don't know Delmar," she said.

  "No," Bain said, "but I can see him inside of you. He's real, as well."

  "You just said I was absent from reality," Ajalia said sharply. "I can't be real and disconnected from reality at the same time."

  "I mean what they call reality," Bain said, waving his hand at the city. "All the lies."

  Ajalia's hand on the damp rag moved slowly. The fabric had turned an ugly gray, and the white stone where she had wiped shone in the moonlight.

  "You aren't real," Ajalia said. She looked up, but Bain had gone.

  "Am too," Bain said. She couldn't see him, but his voice was near her.

  "Go away," Ajalia said.

  "The guilt passes with time," he said. Ajalia shut out the idea of Bain; she pretended she had never seen him in the first place. She fixed her eyes on the red bubbles on the stone steps. A feeling of slithery nausea was in her throat, and a buzzing was behind her eyes. She closed them for a moment, and took a deep breath. I'm fine, she told herself, I'm fine, I'm fine. She imagined Delmar coming back, and seeing his mother's blood over the steps. Ocher came to see me again, she thought, and tried to remember the shape of Ocher's face. She could remember that he had a beard, and that his eyes had looked sharp in the moonlight, but she could not form a complete picture of his features.

  "You know," Bain said. She could see him again. He had sat down next to her on the steps, and his hands were clasped together between his knees. He looked like a miniature man of learning. If he had had a beard, Ajalia thought, it would have been long and white.

  "What do you want?" she said, before he could finish speaking. She dipped the rag into the bowl of white fluid, and the rag sparked a little, as though it would burst into flame. "What did you do with my poison juice?" Ajalia demanded. "It's all white, and shiny." She felt somehow irritated by the incandescent beauty of the stuff in the bowl. It looked like liquid pearl, or crushed starlight.

  "It always looks like that," Bain said. "You're not used to seeing."

  "Seeing what?" Ajalia snapped. She could feel a sharp knob of pain developing behind her left eye. She dropped the smoking rag on the bloodied steps, and began to scrub. She worked her elbow hard into the rag, and moved swiftly up the white steps, wiping away all of the blood.

  "Are you going to outrun me?" Bain asked. He sounded amused.

  "Why are you haunting me?" Ajalia asked. She felt as though a pitchfork were pointed straight over her chest. She told herself that if she only cleaned fast enough, she would be able to get away from the pain. I'm going to die, she thought, and then scrunched the rag harder into the stone. Her knuckles scraped against the front of a step, and her own blood mixed into the blood that Delmar's mother had left behind. Ajalia let out an angry chuff, and wiped her bloodied knuckles on her shirt. She was grateful that she had dressed so poorly. She was sure that Ullar had given her a tunic that was two steps away from being a rag itself, and she was pleased to think that she would be able to dispose of the cloth without guilt. She was not thinking of paying Ullar for the shirt; Ullar seemed, to her, to exist in a strangely amoral plane. Ajalia would just as soon have apologized to the dead body of the witch.

  Ajalia got up to the next step, and the next.

  "The poison tree juice is not white," Ajalia snapped as she scrubbed.

  "Delmar's gone, isn't he?" Bain asked. Ajalia wanted to slap the rag down; she wanted to shout at Bain, but she knew in her heart that he would only look at her, and smile. She had not met anyone like Bain before, but he reminded her a little of herself, and she would have smiled, if someone had been as angry as she was now. She told herself to calm down, and bubbles of rage rose up still in her heart.

  "I'm upset," Ajalia said quietly.

  "What's wrong?" Bain asked kindly. She glanced up at him, then looked back at the blood. She had come to the top of the steps of the dragon temple. There was one small pool at the top of the stairs, where Ajalia had adjusted her grip on Lilleth's body, and then there were drips and splashes at intervals all along the open hall.

  Ajalia sighed, and set to. The poison tree juice, glowing white in the shadows, no longer tickled at her skin. It was, instead, soothing. Ajalia found herself wishing she could drench her whole body in the stuff.

  "This is different," she said, instead of telling Bain what was wrong.

  "What's wrong?" Bain asked again.

  "The white liquid," Ajalia explained. "I thought it burned, before, when it was black. Now it feels nice on my skin."

  "No one cares about you," Bain said. Ajalia kept her head bent close to the floor, so that she could see the drips. She crawled slowly along on her hands and knees. A vision of the morning, and the sunlight that would come through the high windows, filled up her mind. She did not want there to be splashes of crimson still along the white stone floor. She wished she hadn't killed the Thief Lord's wife.

  "Is it supposed to make me feel better," Ajalia asked, "thinking no one cares?"

  "No," Bain said. "I mean, no one feels the way you do. You're the only one." He walked along behind Ajalia. When she missed a dot of blood, he went and picked up the bowl, and dropped a plop of the white stuff over the dot.

  "Thank you," Ajalia gasped. For some reason, she felt short of breath, and dizzy.

  "It gets easier," Bain said. He was watching her with a strangely benevolent expression in his eyes.

  "I'm not afraid of you," Ajalia said. Flashes of white light were appearing over her eyes. She fought back a tide of overwhelming sleepiness. "I'm not afraid," she said again.

  "Of course you are," Bain said. She looked at him for a second, and then looked down at the floor again.

  "What do you want?" she asked again.

  "Let's talk about Delmar now," Bain suggested. Ajalia heaved her body laboriously along; she somehow felt as though she were moving through sludge. She told herself that the air was heavy; she reminded herself that it was all in her head.

  "This happened before," Ajalia gasped, "when I had scars all over my arms."

  "No," Bain said. She glared up at him.

  "Because you would know," she snapped.

  "I can leave, if you like," Bain said. She wanted to tell him to go, but she didn't dare. She thought that if Bain vanished again, she would curl into a knot of darkness, and lose herself. She had thought this feeling was over. She had been sure that the time in the woods had been the last time she would feel so utterly helpless, so alone and bereft of energy to move forward.

  "I'm all right," Ajalia said. She could feel her breath tearing painfully over the top of her throat. I wish, she thought heavily, I had never been born. I wish I could die, she thought.

  "I'm not dead," Bain said brightly.

  "What," Ajalia said, lifting her knees carefully forward, and scraping the bowl along, "does that have to do with anything?"

>   "Your body's alive," Bain said, "but your spirit is not." Ajalia could see Bain's shoes, standing casually beside the bowl. He was wearing leather clogs, and his pant legs were scorched at the bottom, as though he had walked through fire quickly. "My spirit's alive," Bain continued, "but my body is not. I'm not dead, and neither are you."

  "Trade you," Ajalia said with a hollow laugh. Bain regarded her seriously.

  "I don't know how," Bain said.

  "Okay," Ajalia said. She shuffled forward. "I was joking," she said.

  "I wasn't," Bain said. Ajalia propped herself up on her knees, and tried to stand. Her head spun wildly, and a surge of twisting sickness lifted like a cloud through her center. I'm fine, Ajalia told herself, I'm fine, I'm fine.

  "Tell me about Delmar," Ajalia said hoarsely. She stumbled forward, carrying the bowl, and collapsed in a heap near the final cluster of drops. She lifted the rag into the bowl of white fluid, and slopped it over the red splashes.

  "I can do the rest," Bain said. He knelt near Ajalia, and put his hand on the cloth. Bain's hand touched her skin, and Ajalia recoiled with a shout, the rag still in her hand. She looked quickly up at the ceiling; she had not meant to make such a loud noise, and she listened for several moments for the shuffle of feet on the upper floor. No sound came, but she swiped away the last drops of blood, and stood quickly. Her fear of discovery overcame her weakness and nausea, and she walked quickly to the back yard of the temple. The Thief Lord's wife had sunk wholly into the garbage pit; all that remained of Delmar's mother was a loose aggregation of dank smoke that hung over the bubbling black fluid. This poison juice, Ajalia was relieved to see, was still pitch black, and thick as tar. She wiped away the smears of blood along the edges of the pit, and looked thoroughly over the stones of the patio. When she was sure that the blood was all gone, she went to the shelf that lay at the back of the stairs, and retrieved a plain tunic, and a pair of leggings. In the shadows behind the back door of the temple, she stripped away her clothes, and washed her skin with the pearly liquid in the bowl. The white poison juice tingled like fire along her skin, and left an unearthly glow on her arms. She sighed at the touch of the white juice; it spread over her like light oil, and sank into her arms and torso with a hiss.