Circle In The Deep (The Outcast Royal Book 1)

by Aaron D. Schneider

  “Live and learn.” The girl shrugged. “Now, your name?”

  With a pained moan, she folded her arms to cover her breasts and her fingers pressed against the goose-pimpled flesh on her shoulders.

  “I’m cold,” she observed and turned her half-open gaze on the youth.

  “You big baby.” The girl snorted and disappeared for a moment.

  In her absence, Ax-Wed finally realized that the chamber was lit by a soft blue-toned light, something not unfamiliar to her but nothing like the torches from before. She also noticed that overhead, rather than an expanse of plain stone, designs were carved into the ceiling that were also uncomfortably familiar.

  But before she could give them the attention they deserved, the youth appeared with a ratty expanse of dark fabric stretched between her open arms.

  “Name?” she said.

  “Sadist.” She groaned as she tried to think of a way she could get the blanket without unfolding her arms from her shivering body.

  “Name?” the youth pressed.

  Ax-Wed wondered if she could sweep the girl’s legs out from under her and hope she fell on top of her with the blanket between them. Then, she could headbutt the runt in the face and snatch the blanket in her teeth. She was so committed to the idea that she twitched one leg as a test. Her thigh burned and her hips ached with even that small movement.

  It wasn’t worth the risk. She would have to acquiesce to her tormentor.

  “Ax-Wed,” she muttered gruffly and glared daggers at the girl.

  “What?” her companion asked and her face crinkled with confusion.

  “I’m cold.” She growled belligerently to emphasize her point.

  “What kind of a name is Ax-Wed?” the girl demanded and shook her head slowly.

  “It’s better than Brat-Bully or Blanket-Torturer,” she replied and sniffed disdainfully. “And I’m still cold.”

  “Fine, fine.” the girl sighed with exaggerated patience. “It’s nice to meet you Ax-Wed. I’m Zoria.”

  “I’m still cold,” she pointed out and added as an afterthought, “Zoria.”

  The youth rolled her eyes as she made the eternal noise of adolescent disgust in the back of her throat, but she sank into a crouch to drape the dark expanse of fabric over her erstwhile hostage.

  “You are pathetic,” she muttered as she tucked it gently around her shivering body. “But I suppose you’re better company than my other neighbors.”

  Ax-Wed chuckled despite her circumstances and was rewarded by another fit of coughing and a mouthful of clotted blood. She wasn’t sure how much lined her throat but it was beyond absurd how much she’d already expelled today.

  That is if it was still today.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Time is difficult to tell down here,” Zoria said as she settled beside her, careful to avoid the gory lumps. “But if I had to wager a guess, it would be at least a day.”

  She responded with a low groan. “A day,” she repeated and incredulity added a sharp edge to her tone. “You sat and watched me shivering on a cold stone floor for an entire day?”

  “I was distraught,” the girl protested and her nostrils flared in an adorable expression of indignation. “And it’s not like I have some downy bed to lay you on. Where do you think I’ve been sleeping over the last few months?”

  Few months? Ax-Wed’s mind reeled at the revelation.

  “You’ve been down here that long?” she asked, unable to keep the awe from her voice. “How?”

  “By not being stupid most of the time,” Zoria replied and a scowl puckered her features. “That and a few happy accidents have kept me alive in this hellhole.”

  Months?

  The implications were an odd mixture of unsettling and encouraging. Unsettling because it meant she could probably expect the same if she was lucky, but encouraging in that there must be some food and water there. Zoria was quite thin but certainly not emaciated as far as she could tell, so there was a decent chance that food was more than starvation rations but with two of them, it could get complicated.

  Besides, she told herself, I don’t plan to be down here for months. I’ll meet Morah like the Grimm Handmaiden herself before the week’s out while I can still give a good account of myself.

  The dour thought of her falling beneath a ripping, grinding pile of degenerates wasn’t the heroic end she’d hoped for, but she didn’t plan to creep around the tunnels until her arms wasted away and her back bent. It was better to spend her strength trying to find a way out but if nothing came in a few days, she wasn’t sure what she would do.

  A thought suddenly struck her and she turned to Zoria with a frown stamped on her face.

  “How do you tell time down here?” she asked and the first kernel of hope rose in her mind. If there was some view—maybe a high window or grate that gave a view of the sky—then together, they might have a chance.

  The girl lapsed into silence, her expression utterly blank. Staring at her, Ax-Wed had a sneaking suspicion that she shared the expression when she let the ice form around her heart. The armor was coming up and the fortress of mind and soul secured themselves against attack.

  “It has to do with the deliveries,” she said, her voice flat and almost bored. “Through talking with some of them, I determined that it was six days between each time they dump people into the hole and I’ve learned to judge the rough spacing of the time to estimate when a day is. I’m getting good enough that I can guess it within the hour of when they’ll bring the next people in.”

  The warrior woman conceded that it made some sense, especially when combined with their meeting.

  “That’s why you and I ran into each other,” she said and nodded. “You knew those creatures would be occupied in another part of this place.”

  Zoria nodded but said nothing else and her gaze slid downward as if to stare through the floor.

  “Why did you stop trying to talk to those who were dropped in?” Ax-Wed asked, having already deduced what had happened to the unfortunates. “I’m not blaming you and only saying it would have been nice to have warning as to what was coming.”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Too dangerous?” she suggested gently as she adjusted her blanket.

  Zoria began to nod, paused, and shook her head.

  “What then?” she pressed, not sure why she risked alienating the girl with her questions except she felt she needed to get a better understanding of the strange youth.

  The girl took several breaths as though gathering herself to speak but each time, she let the breath go with a sigh and the silence stretched between them. After a while, she was about to give up and ask for some water to rinse her throat and mouth when the mechanical, disinterested facade fell and her companion sniffed.

  Ax-Wed, whose gaze had wandered to the strangely carved ceiling and walls, returned her focus to the girl and saw more tears brimming there that refused to fall.

  “Once I’d learned about the schedule, there was no point,” she whispered. “I couldn’t save them. Even when I offered to lead some of them into the tunnels to escape, they suspected me and wouldn’t come.” A short, sharp laugh pushed out of her. “One idiot even thought I was responsible and almost got me killed trying to chase after me.”

  Zoria’s gaze finally met hers and her eyes were like glittering jade through the watery veil.

  “Why talk to people who will die screaming a few minutes after you meet them?”

  Ax-Wed could see the painful logic of that and she couldn’t help but feel part of her heart going out to the girl as she imagined her cowering in the tunnels while she heard the sounds of those creatures descending on their victims. She was lucky she hadn’t gone stark raving mad in her months down there from continually hearing the screams mingled with obscene howls, hoots, and grunts.

  A shaft of suspicion entered her mind and she studied the girl’s vacant, gleaming eyes and began to wonder if the child had truly escaped madness.

/>   “Water…” She coughed and shook Zoria from her absent staring. “Water, child.”

  The girl blinked rapidly and looked at Ax-Wed with a small but grateful smile on her lips. She nodded and darted away, leaving her to stare at the ceiling.

  While she was gone, the Thulian took a moment to force herself onto one elbow and inspected her injury.

  She winced at the sight.

  Where once there had been a gaping wound, there was now a twisted knot of dark, pulsating flesh. It wasn’t that she didn’t know the effects of sorcerous healing, but she’d never had to heal a wound this severe before. Like a blistering, malignant tumor, it squatted on her flesh as the obscene cost of the unnatural magic of her people.

  As delicately as her trembling hands allowed, she probed along the perimeter of the lump. It clung doggedly along the entire circumference and when she applied a little more pressure when she thought she felt a gap, she was rewarded by a stab of pain. A hissed curse escaped her and for a moment, she could do nothing but freeze propped on one elbow, not daring to move.

  “I thought about doing that too,” Zoria said as she appeared with a peculiar vessel balanced in her hands. “It swelled inside the wound as soon as I pulled the dagger out and I almost took steel to it on principle.”

  Ax-Wed thought about covering herself with the blanket again but she was still scared of moving too much and at the moment, blessed water was so very close.

  “Hey,” she said, her voice calm but firm. “Is that water for me?”

  Zoria’s gaze snapped up from the offending growth and looked at the dish in her hands.

  “Right, sorry,” she muttered absent-mindedly and sank beside Ax-Wed. “It’s very cold so not too fast now.”

  She wasn’t joking although the word she might have used would have been icy rather than merely cold. All the same, the Thulian woman’s first drink was a long one and she savored the cleansing rush of the liquid sweeping through her blood-crusted mouth. A fresh crop of gooseflesh broke out across her chest and arms but she still enjoyed it as it rolled down her clotted throat.

  “Easy now,” Zoria warned as she began to draw the vessel back. “Take a breath. It isn’t going anywhere.”

  Ax-Wed might have made a quip about the child’s mothering but she was too busy staring longingly at the retreating dish. The water lolled tauntingly in it, almost coy as it sloshed over curling glyphs that rose above the tarnished copper.

  Her mournful glance turned into a sudden glare as she realized that she recognized the embossed symbols. Her frailties momentarily forgotten, her hand seized the edge of the receptacle.

  “What are you doing?” Zoria demanded as the frigid water slopped and some of it splashed over her legs.

  “Lamt,” the warrior woman said as she bent over the dish and ignored the cold water that lapped at her fingers.

  “Have you gone mad?” the girl cried as she made a single, utterly ineffectual tug to retrieve the bowl before she let go. She might as well have tried to pry a crag from a mountain.

  “This is Lamt,” Ax-Wed declared and ran a finger over the spiraling glyph before she traced her finger to another symbol embossed along the outer rim of the dish. “And this… this is Inax but inverted, so Xaneh?”

  If Zoria was being asked she’d have honestly said she didn’t have a clue, but the Thulian’s furrowed brow assured her the question must be rhetorical. The strange giant of a woman seemed to be lost in her musings, although the child couldn’t begin to guess why.

  Rising to her knees with a stifled groan Ax-Wed took the vessel in both hands, drained the water in one long gulp, and barely shivered when trickles of chilled water ran down her chin to dapple her breast. Wherever the water fell, a fresh ripple of cold-prickled flesh rose but she didn’t even shiver as she held the emptied container before her and her fingers traced the series of symbols.

  When she finally spoke, it was in the ancient language of her people, as fierce and musical as jagged chimes in a sea wind.

  “Lamt - Xani - Yjaw - Nyth - Shoth,” she intoned and frowned. “No, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I agree,” Zoria added irritably, more than a little put out to be so suddenly on the outside looking in as it were. “It doesn’t make a damn—”

  “Shush,” Ax-Wed muttered absently as she began to turn the vessel in her hands.

  This did nothing to improve the girl’s mood and she practically glared daggers as she folded her arms and waited with a tapping foot.

  “Nyth’Shoth Lamt’Xani Yjawen,” she murmured and the pieces fell into place as the blood drained from her face. “Morah be swift.”

  Zoria’s indignation melted away as she watched dread blanch the warrior woman’s features.

  “What?” she asked and tried to not sound like a frightened child. “What is it?”

  Ax-Wed looked at the bowl as though it was made of scorpions and with unsteady hands, she lowered it to the floor and withdrew her hands as though afraid it might spring after her with a stinging tail or venomous fangs.

  “Where did this come from?” she asked, her gaze fixed on it.

  The girl looked confused and her gaze darted from the woman to the dish.

  “I found it,” she said and a defensive edge crept into her voice. “It was simply laying there and—”

  “Where?” the Thulian asked and her voice refused to rise even as it impelled the word with dire gravity. Her gaze rose and met Zoria’s. “Where did you find it?”

  The girl, who’d already seen too much in her young life to be easily frightened, felt fear’s numbing, crippling talons trace intimately down her spine.

  “Follow me,” she said with a rough swallow.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I don’t like this.” Iyshan rumbled disapproval and his long, scarred fingers caressed the hilt of the scimitar at his belt.

  Vahrem nodded and decided it was better to not point out that this was at least the fifth time his faithful manservant had made his opinion known. The fact that they now moved armed and accompanied by stout members of the caravan, also armed, was evidence enough that the merchant was suspicious as well.

  When the attempted ruse at the Silken Nest had come to nothing, there had been no reason to continue to impose upon Tobbard’s hospitality. With sincere thanks and a sincerer hope that he hadn’t brought trouble to his friend’s door, the company had moved to the stockyard. There, they’d waited for word from Alborz, which had come that evening in the form of one of his men.

  “The Argbed wants you to come to him at the Tin Quarter barracks,” the man had stated brusquely after Vahrem had gone to meet him at the stockyard gate. “I’ll conduct you to him.”

  Before Iyshan had uttered his first misgivings, the merchant had sensed something afoot.

  “The Tin Quarter, you said?”

  The royal guard nodded, his entire demeanor stiff and sour.

  “Not the Citadel?” he had clarified.

  “Your friend was taken close to here, wasn’t she?” the guard had said and his eyes narrowed to accusing slits. “It makes sense to work with the nearest barracks.”

  A lifetime of reading men told him that although this man was most certainly from Alborz’s command—his face was certainly familiar—he had no intention to go with the guard right then.

  “Thank you for the prompt delivery of the message,” he had said with an easy smile. “I have a few business matters to finish but I will be there shortly.”

  The guard had scowled and his hand tightened around the metal-banded rod he bore like a walking stick.

  “You’re supposed to come with me,” he’d replied in a flinty tone.

  “I appreciate that but my business ensures that I can pay hefty sums to the prince. Besides, I do know the way,” Vahrem had answered smoothly.

  The man had left but not without another scowl.

  The streets of the Tin Quarter were atypically quiet but that in and of itself wasn’t particularly suspicious g
iven the abductions sweeping the quarter. It had at least become apparent that whatever stalked the alleys of Jehadim’s poorest quarter preferred its victims isolated, so most sane souls were cloistered in their homes with the doors barred.

  “It’s almost unrecognizable,” commented Asa, a Wain Dwarf who’d volunteered to come with Durra, who had insisted on being present. “The Tin’s not the hub of entertainment like the Copper but I’ve never heard her this quiet.”

  Vahrem had to agree, but he wasn’t sure if he appreciated the stillness and barren streets or not. If something foul was about to happen, he was glad he didn’t have to discern foe from bystanders in a crowded street. Still, a street empty of witnesses meant ambushers had no reason to not come in force.

  “Stay sharp and stay together,” he instructed, one hand curled around the pommel of his whip. “We have only a short way to go.”

  As it soon proved, it wasn’t short enough.

  They’d intended to cut as direct a path across the quarter to the barracks without taking any alleys that would leave them bottlenecked. Strolling down a narrow corridor was a good way for them to be picked off by attackers on roofs while men on the ground blocked the exits with wagons or their bodies.

  Understanding this, Iyshan and Vahrem had planned to take Drop Street as far as Rakers Avenue and then follow said avenue to the fork where they’d pass through the Handy Market, a wide plaza where the homeless of the city sometimes gathered. There were usually no more than a few small knots of indigents and the occasional roving pack of thieves but given the numbers and arms of the group, they’d trusted that no one would give them trouble.

  When they reached the fork where Rakers became Bone and Bite streets, they discovered that they’d underestimated the fear that gripped the quarter.

  “Serpent’s Sting,” Iyshan swore and grasped the hilt of his sword hard enough to make it rattle in its scabbard. Vahrem nodded as he stared wide-eyed at the spectacle before him.

  Handy Market was filled to bursting with bedraggled figures huddled together. It seemed every poor and wayward soul in all the city had come to this place in hopes of avoiding the specter that preyed on the lonely and lost. Some hunkered down around crude fires that blackened the worn paving stones of the plaza, while others grouped together in crude rows of sleeping figures. They were a squalid, stinking, sniffling, shuffling herd of humanity but at the very least, for tonight, none of them were alone.