Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1)

by Matthew Colville

  The little man danced away.

  “Don’t touch it,” Heden said quickly. Vanora pulled her hand back.

  “It’s magic,” Heden said. “But it’s also extremely…delicate. It’s got hundreds of little gears and pulleys in there and if you touch it the oils on your skin will muck everything up.” She nodded her understanding and now appeared even more fascinated.

  “It’ll work for a few hours a day, then it needs to go back in its case. It’ll let you know when it needs to rest.” The little man was moving in circles around the table, alternatively doing complex balletic dance moves, and clownish cartwheels. Vanora giggled.

  “Go ahead,” Heden said. “Ask it something.”

  Vanora looked shyly at the little machine. “Har…harlik.”

  “Harlequin” Heden pronounced.

  “Harlequin,” she repeated. The little man did a backflip, landed, and saluted. “Tell me about…” she looked sideways. “Tell me about Heden,” she said smiling slyly.

  “Alas milady, his story is written on pages I’ve yet to read,” the little voice piped up.

  Vanora harrumphed and screwed her face up.

  “It doesn’t know much about us,” Heden said. “About Vaslorians. It doesn’t know what Corwell is or where Celkirk is. It was made a long time ago by a people who live west, across the Bale Sea.

  “But it can teach you to read and write and there’s a lot of good plays and music in there you’ll like. Probably better to let it teach you before you start asking questions. You can ask it anything, but a lot of common sense stuff, it doesn’t understand. You have to imagine you’re a long ago princess from a faraway land.” Vanora liked the sound of this.

  “It must be worth a fortune!” she whispered.

  “It’s priceless,” Heden said.

  Vanora looked at him sharply.

  “Means its value is beyond money,” Heden explained. Vanora accepted this, though it seemed to challenge her.

  “Harlequin, begin with reading and writing, please,” Heden ordered

  “Your daughter will be the finest student I have ever taught!” The Harlequin exclaimed.

  Heden raised his eyebrows and went “Hmmm,” and noticed that Vanora had looked away to hide some expression. He thought she might be blushing.

  Heden picked up the base and put it in front of the harlequin. It dutifully stepped onto it, and when Heden replaced the glass dome, it resumed its earlier pose and stopped moving.

  “There. It’ll automatically revive once you take the dome off. Make sure it can get to its base when it needs to, and then put the glass back when it does.”

  Vanora nodded. She put her hands on the glass and looked down at the frozen man. She took a deep breath and turned to look up at Heden.

  “A month?” she asked, pleading for any other answer.

  “Less,” Heden said. He wanted to come back to her already and he hadn’t even left. “Might be as little as a week.” This gave her some hope.

  Vanora desperately wanted to ask more, Heden could tell. But there was something that told her now was not the time to burden him with questions. Heden found he liked Vanora a great deal. She had an instinct for people and how to deal with them he found very neat. Precise. The product of her experience at the Rose.

  “How are you going to get there? Do you have a horse?” Vanora asked.

  “I did,” Heden said. “But I sold him.”

  “Oh,” Vanora said, disappointed.

  “Besides it would take me three weeks to get there by horse.”

  “Then how are you…going to…” Vanora didn’t want to finish the question. She felt like maybe it wasn’t okay to ask.

  “I have a tapestry that flies through the air,” Heden said.

  Vanora’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open.

  “You have a…are you serious?”

  Heden smiled in spite of himself, and Vanora smiled back. He slung the backpack over his shoulder, walked to the front door and opened it.

  “I never lie,” Heden said, standing in the doorway. Light and the noise of a crowd of people passing by spilled in. He pointed at Vanora suddenly. “Tell me you’re going to be alright.” Heden wasn’t sure why he said this.

  Vanora looked at him and smiled. “I’ll be alright,” she said. It sounded like a promise. Like she was reassuring him.

  Heden nodded. He looked around his inn. “See you soon.”

  Heden left and Vanora laughed gaily to herself. She ran to the window to look out, but pulled back.

  Heden strode back in, snatched up the sword he’d left bundled up and leaning against a chair, and turned to leave again.

  “For real this time,” he said winking, making Vanora smile more widely.

  And he was gone.

  Vanora watched him leave, but he was quickly swallowed by the crowd. She was disappointed, hoping to catch a glimpse of his mode of travel. Probably, she thought, he leaves the city before he uses it. She imagined him standing nobly on a rich, tasseled tapestry as it sped through the air and something about it thrilled her.

  She turned and looked at the large common room in the Hammer & Tongs which she already thought of as ‘home,’ and walked up to the table with the harlequin. She removed the glass dome.

  The little man came to life more quickly this time. He leaped off the brass base onto the table. He bowed deeply and flourished his conical cap.

  “We shall erect a mighty city of the intellect here, Mi’lady. Let us place the first brick.”

  Vanora dropped herself into a chair, and regarded the figure with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m game.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The door to the small inn burst open, wind and rain howling in from the night outside. The candles guttered. The fire roared.

  A cluster of figures, all cloaked, dragged a body through the door. They were drenched. The figure they carried was unnaturally pale.

  The dozen townspeople in the inn moved as one to the group and lifted the unconscious body from their hands. Two people, a man and a woman at two different tables, did not join the others. The innkeeper watched intently from behind the bar, mouth open, eyes wide.

  They carried the body to a nearby table. They placed him on it like the table was an altar and he was a sacrifice, and starting pulling strips of clothing off him. His pale skin was rent in several places exposing red flesh and white bone. There was almost no blood.

  “We found the carter,” Dade, one of the rescuers, said. They all took off their sodden cloaks, mist boiling off them in the warm room. They were all young. The oldest only seventeen. The youngest barely thirteen.

  Those who had been waiting or resting in the inn were all adults.

  The young rescuers had swords, bows, maces. Backpacks. They had left ready to fight something, but returned unscathed.

  “We found him with his cart,” Dade’s brother Jeremy said.

  “It was on fire!” Wenna, one of the two girls, the youngest, said.

  “On fire?” one of the townspeople said. “In this rain?”

  “Lamp oil,” Meliora, the older girl said. Wenna was wide-eyed and shaking. Meliora was quiet and grim.

  A middle-aged woman in a plain brown dress put her ear to the carter’s chest, cheek touching one of the wounds and after a moment of silence, looked up and said, “He’s alive.”

  All the townspeople in the inn breathed a sigh of relief and started talking amongst themselves as the priestess began to pray over the carter.

  The rescuers all looked at Credan, their round friend. “I didn’t,” he said, lost for words. “I didn’t know what to…”

  “It’s ok,” Dade, the eldest of them, said. He put his hand on Credan’s shoulder. “You did fine.”

  “Will he be alright?” Jeremy asked.

  The priestess nodded. She moved her hands over the carter as she spoke softly in words none of them could understand and the wounds began to cl
ose.

  One of the guests, clad all in black, looked on dispassionate and disinterested from her table. The other warmed his hands by the fire, back to the townsfolk. A small patch of what looked like frost on his cloak melted away in the heat. It could not be frost, however, it being the first month of spring.

  After a few more moments, they could all see the carter begin to breathe normally. Though his eyes remained closed, he ceased to look like a lifeless body.

  Dade and Jeremy looked at each other. Jeremy nodded.

  “We’re going back out,” Dade announced.

  “What?!” A woman cried. “You can’t! Why?”

  Her husband, the boys’ father, put his hands on her shoulders. She instinctively grasped them.

  “Boys,” the father said. “Don’t upset your mother. You done fine, you found carter and he’ll live. Everyone’s proud of you. Leave this be ‘till morning. We’ll get the Lord of….”

  “Can’t leave it ‘till morning, da,” Jeremy explained, picking up his cloak and making a futile attempt to wring it out.

  Credan and Wenna looked back and forth from their parents to Dade and Jeremy. They were afraid to go, but more afraid to stay. Meliora just looked out the door into the darkness.

  “Carter’s wife and son were dragged off, Jeremy reckons,” Dade said. “Might still be alive.”

  “Trail big enough for a blind man to follow,” Jeremy said. Of the two boys, Dade was slightly taller, but much broader. Jeremy was lean and moved like a cat.

  “Lord Mayne would just send to Ollghum Keep anyway,” Meliora observed. “Two days. Might be alive now,” she turned back to the group and pulled her cloak on and over her head, obscuring her features, “but they’ll be dead by then.”

  One man, Meliora’s father, stared at his daughter and said nothing. His eyes welled with tears. He realized now he no longer knew his daughter, and blamed himself for her mother’s death.

  “Credan,” a large woman announced. “Stop this foolishness and come here.” Creden’s whole body tightened at this sound. At those words in that tone of voice. He hated it, and the hatred shocked him rigid. He looked with fear at his mother.

  Dade and Jeremy looked at him. Dade’s confident gaze calmed him down. Nothing was said.

  “This is madness,” the brothers’ father said, stepping forward. “That woman and her boy, there’s nothing you can do for them.”

  Dade looked at his father. Both seemed calm. “You don’t know that,” Dade said.

  His father knew the boy was right. “There could be anything out there. It’s dangerous at night. Remember Beal.”

  “Jeremy thinks its kethat,” Dade said. Jeremy nodded. “I think we can handle kethat.”

  The word caused a susurration. The kethat were known scavengers, but rarely attacked the town. Nothing was stopping the five children from leaving. They seemed to be waiting for some approval from the adults. The adults were wondering how far they should go to protect their families.

  A barrier had arisen between them without anyone saying anything, had already opened as soon as they burst in with the carter. At no point had either side made any attempt to cross the room and make contact with the others.

  Father stared at son. No one spoke.

  The man at the fire stood up, appearing old and bent with age. He laboriously stretched his joints out and turned to face the gathered townspeople.

  Though only in his early forties, he was older than most of the parents. He wore a plate chestpiece over leather armor. He had a plain sword at his side, and stood beside a heavy pack with many pockets. His face was grey and gaunt, his hair short, black. His eyes, blue and wide. The only part of him that seemed open and expressive.

  He looked at the young rescuers.

  “You’re going to stay here,” his voice rough.

  They looked back and forth at each other, some looked to their parents. The parents looked confused as well.

  “Listen,” one of them said, stepping forward. “We don’t…”

  “You’re going to stay here, with your parents,” the man said. “With your families. And you don’t leave the inn until morning.”

  “This is our problem. We can take care of this,” Dade said, Jeremy standing so close behind him he was pressing his shoulder into his brother’s back, something he subconsciously did to support his older brother.

  Heden looked at the 5 boys and girls. “I know,” he said darkly. “I know you can do it. You can find them, rescue the wife and son. Kill a lot of keth. Kill and keep killing.

  “I know you can do it,” he reiterated. “It’s easy, and you’re ready. That’s why I’m going to do it. So you don’t have to.”

  None of the rescuers understood, but each felt the palpable sensation that they stood at the edge of a gaping chasm, prepared to leap off into a darkness that would change them forever. Some were eager for it, some afraid. And this man was trying to stop them.

  “It could be a whole tribe,” one of the men said. “There could be a hundred of them.”

  Heden looked at the man, expressionless. “Not when I’m done.”

  “You don’t know where the carter’s…”

  “I know where it is,” he said. “I saw it coming in.” This made no sense to them, but they couldn’t know he saw it from a thousand feet high, had hated himself for not stopping and investigating the blazing fire in the rain, freezing at that high altitude.

  “I’ll be back a little after dawn,” he said to the room in general, shifting the pack onto his back.

  The room had changed. Heden had placed everyone in the room against him, reuniting them in a way. None of them seemed equipped to muster any opposition. Their experiences in life had not prepared them for someone like Heden coming in and doing something terrible so they didn’t have to.

  “You need a tracker,” the woman in black said casually. The way she said it, it wasn’t clear if it was a question or a statement.

  Heden looked at her. “You know how to use that thing?” he asked, nodding at the woodsman’s sword. That she could use the unstrung bow leaning against the back of her chair went without saying.

  “Served with Duke Baede in the Fifth Irregulars,” she said, matching Heden’s reserve.

  The name shocked Heden for a moment and his eyes unfocused as he remembered something. He took a deep breath and brought himself back to the present.

  “Good enough for me,” he said. “Come on.”

  The woodsman stood and gathered her gear. She followed Heden to the door. Everyone in the inn watched silently.

  Reaching the door, he stopped and turned to face the men and women, sons and daughters.

  “Any of you follow me, get any ideas, I will personally thrash the skin off you,” he made a point to look each of them in the eye. “Try me if you don’t believe me.”

  He opened the door into the black spitting rain, and left. The woodsman closed the door behind her.

  Wenna’s mother and father rushed forth and wrapped themselves gratefully around their daughter. The spell was broken, and Wenna grabbed them back and began to cry with relief.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Heden was wrong. They got back to the inn half an hour before dawn.

  When the door opened, everyone in the inn stood. Fathers and mothers had, with one exception, reunited with daughters and sons. No one had left.

  Heden walked in unceremoniously with the body of the carter’s wife slung over his shoulder and went straight to the closest table in the inn. He carefully unloaded her and put her on it. The woodsman came in behind with the son carried in her arms and stood in the doorway, not sure what to do.

  Heden stood next to the table, looking down. No one moved. Heden was covered in blood and black ichorous stains soaked his armor and covered his face.

  “They’re alive,” Heden said.

  At this pronouncement, the townspeople came and relieved the woodsman of her burden and surrounded the table with the carter’s wife on it. They all
began talking to each other at once.

  As the folk came and gently took the unconscious boy from the woodsman, she looked at them, people she didn’t know. She looked dazed. She was breathing in fits, hair matted with rain and blood. Her black leather armor was wet and slick, but it was impossible to tell whether with water or blood or both. But she smelled like an abattoir.

  “He’s got a…” the woodsman gasped as they took the boy from her, sweating in spite of the cold. “He’s got a flying carpet,” she said.

  The townspeople appeared not to be listening. Relieved of her burden, she collapsed into a chair.

  Heden found the innkeeper and gently pulled him away from the concerned crowd. He pointed silently to the bar. The innkeep looked in Heden’s eyes, and nodded.

  As he scurried behind the bar, Heden said “and meat. And bread. And cheese.”

  The innkeep went through a door that led down into the cellar.

  Heden leaned on the bar. Dade and Jeremy, their father behind them, stood and looked at Heden’s back.

  “We could’ve done it,” Dade said. His father frowned and tried to silence him, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Heden gave no response, no indication he heard anything.

  “This wasn’t your problem,” Dade continued. “Why did you do it?” The young man was demanding now.

  The innkeep came up with a large platter covered in unprepared food. He began cutting and slicing. No one had eaten while Heden and the woodsman were gone

  “Does it…” Jeremy said. “It is because of the kethat? Do you hate them?”

  Heden realized that while they’d been gone, the townsfolk had been guessing at why a man would assume this burden, this risk, to rescue people he didn’t know so that other people he didn’t know wouldn’t have to. Maybe he really hates the keth, they reasoned.

  In Heden’s experience, people didn’t understand him even when he explained himself. And he’d already explained himself once.

  Heden grabbed a large chunk of duck from the innkeep’s plate, some cheese, and turned to face the three men.

  He took a bite of the duck, and talked while he chewed.

  “Doesn’t matter why,” he said. “They’re alive, you’re alive. Everyone’s here, safe. And none of you had to kill anyone. You want to go out tomorrow with your friends,” he said, indicating young Wenna who was trying to listen without being noticed, “go out and have an adventure. Up to you. I won’t be here.