“If you’re having a joke with me, I’m not laughing. Elisha Barber saved a lot of lives hereabouts, and we won’t settle for a sweet-tongued liar.”
“There’s got to be somebody inside who’d know you,” Madoc pointed out. “The way that you proved it to us.”
There was one. Elisha glanced north to where the spire of St. Bartholomew’s pierced the billows of smoke. What was he afraid of, after all? He and his brother’s widow had parted on terms as good as could be, though she blamed him for the deaths of her baby and husband both. Still, not as much as he blamed himself. Elisha swallowed the lump in his throat and shouted, “My brother’s widow Helena would bear me witness.”
The man leaned over the wall to get a better view. “Nathaniel Tinsmith’s widow? She’s down ’ere trying to convince us the barber’s no saint.”
“She cursed me on the day I left for war. Have her tell you the curse.”
“I’m on that, I am!” the man bellowed back, then he moved away and returned in a few moments. “All right, Barber, if that’s what you claim, what’s the curse?”
“She cursed me to love and to lose my love.”
“It’s him.” A woman’s voice rang with wonder.
“Go to the door,” hollered one of the men.
“Who’s that with you?” another demanded. “King’s men or the mayor’s?”
Madoc yanked his broadsword from its sheath and brandished it to the heavens. “Our own men!” he roared, and his men hooted their assent, to the amusement of those above.
One hand resting on his medical pouch, Elisha walked toward the smaller door cut into the gate. A panel slid aside and suspicious eyes glanced left and right, then the door swung in, and he stepped through, followed by his personal guard. From another door in the gate tower’s stone wall came a trio of men, and one woman, a large piece of cloth binding a bundle to her chest. From inside came the squeal of a contented infant.
Elisha’s knees went suddenly weak, and Madoc caught his elbow. “Steady on, there.”
“Aye, thank you.” His brother’s widow once lived as a whore in one of the brothels he tended as a barber and yet she looked more beautiful now than she ever had before, her face alight with the happiness of her faith, and her new calling.
“You needn’t have come,” he said. “I’m sure you’d rather not—”
Helena came to meet him, her approach revealing the happy, misshapen face of the orphan she carried. “If the Lord has forgiven you, then so have I.” In spite of her words, she looked doubtful.
“Thank you,” he said. “Have you heard any rumors of the king?” Elisha scanned the scene around him as he spoke, both for information, and distraction.
“Only that he’s vanished, and the queen with him,” she replied.
One of the men stepped up quickly. “We reckon he scarpered to avoid our wrath. If we got our hands on him, we’d serve him right! What he’s done to you was just the last straw!”
Frowning, Elisha pointed out, “He’s only been the king for a matter of weeks.”
“Aye, but it’s high time the nobs started paying us some mind. We’re paying their bloody taxes, fighting their bloody wars, then there’s a drought or a freeze, and we’re the ones who starve for it. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Sure you have, tending the sick and all. We’re the ones suffering, and we’re asking for our say, now.”
Indeed, Elisha had seen it, the way doctors and surgeons avoided hospitals full of the poor, the way even Duke Randall dismissed them out of hand. And yet he knew the other side as well, for Thomas would bury his best friend alive rather than allow his people to be plunged again into war. Elisha tried to imagine what Thomas would do. “Aye, I’ve seen enough of trouble to last me a while, but burning the city’s no way to cure what ails us.”
The breeze shifted, carrying an acrid wash of smoke, and the baby coughed then started to wail. The smoke blew hot against his skin, with a tingle that caught him unawares, then burst into a flare of agony. Elisha cried out, slapping his arm as if to put out the flames.
Bouncing the baby, Helena started at his cry. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s the smoke.” His eyes teared as panic struck through him.
“We’ll get inside, out of the wind.” She reached for his elbow, but he stood fast.
“I can’t, not until the fires are out.” The smoke touched him again, trailing fingers of pain that encircled his ankles, then a haze that struck him blind, his skull throbbing. He knew in an instant that it wasn’t his own, not his memory, nor his pain. The heat of the smoke twisted down his scarred throat and brought with it an edge of cold that he knew all too well. “Oh, God.”
Flinging off the supporting hand, Elisha ran headlong into the smoke, scattering the crowd that gathered to see him, abandoning his bodyguard and his questioners. He ran for the Dyer’s Hall praying under his breath that he would not be too late.
Chapter 3
As Elisha sped through the streets, dodging rubble and leaping ditches, he breathed the terrible smoke. Drawing upon the strength of his talisman of King Thomas’s hair, he sent his anger out before him. A thing without substance except to another witch, it still silenced the rowdy revolutionaries and sent them stumbling out of his way, crying out and crossing themselves. They shouted in his wake, caught up in the emotions. Without contact, he had only enough power to send those shivers down their backs, but it was enough—just as once, from his premature grave, he had made his howl of injustice felt: the moment that had led to all of this.
Flames danced against the far horizon, between St. Paul’s and the Tower, consuming the houses of rich and poor alike. Bells rang in the church towers as priests sounded their needless alarm—the orange glow and hovering pall of smoke were enough to signal the ruin that approached them. To one side far ahead, he could hear the chant of a fire brigade, a group of desperate neighbors trying to beat back the flames from their own homes. For a moment, the voices gave him hope, then they burst into screams as the fire spread beyond them. The leaning upper stories, nearly touching across the streets, provided avenues for fire to race overhead even as those who fought it hauled up their water buckets. Other streets echoed with shouting and cheers as a fine house crackled into flame, and arsonists broke doors open to steal things that wouldn’t be missed in the heap of cinders that would remain.
Heat flowed from his left-hand side as flames crept down the wood-and-plaster facades. The fire spread in a crackling march, ever closer. Right in front of them, a trio of men, hooded and armed, smashed open the panels of a shop front and leapt inside, one of them pausing to glare back at Elisha. Elisha had no time for petty burglary. A stone wall groaned ominously, its mortar cracking with the heat, and Elisha dodged further south along an alley, across a churchyard, and out the other side.
He ran down the muddy streets and around the corner into Thames Street, with its warehouses backed up to the river that brought these wealthy men their stock. Smoke billowed from the tall houses, their proud glass windows smashed while a hollering mass of citizens clogged the street. A backdrop of flames obscured the sky beyond them. Ahead, unseen among the press of people, someone screamed, and others called out to the Lord, prayers shouted over the din, recognized more by rhythm than words.
Glass ground beneath his feet, glittering shards disappearing into the muck. Here and there, torn scraps of cloth, ruined pottery, and a scatter of spices marked where the mob fought over the fine things they could not afford, taking what they could beneath the cover of chaos. The destruction choked him nearly as much as the smoke that turned his stomach.
At last, he burst through into the cleared space before the burning buildings and confirmed what he already knew. Flames licked out the windows of Martin Draper’s house, blackening the plaster and warping the empty wooden frames. Houses to both sides burned as well. The blaze began blocks from here, and he had no i
dea how it would end aside from badly.
It was all well and good to enter the city, but what the Hell could he do now? Use the river somehow? What magic could end this inferno?
A few dozen rowdy citizens ringed the fire, some of them holding back the well-dressed women who used to live there. One of the women screamed, a long wail that fell away into sobbing only to rise again as her captors shook and caressed her. A few bodies lay on the pavement, blood pooling around them.
Extending his senses, Elisha swept his touch among the dead, each a well of awful cold that reached up to him like a dog recognizing its master. He searched for the touch of agony that swirled in the smoke and called him here. A huddled figure on the outskirts yet lived, and Elisha started forward to help where he could and find a plan to save the rest.
He had gone two steps when he noticed the rope.
From the hands of three men standing to the side, a heavy rope stretched taut up and over the wrought-iron arm that once held Martin’s sign. The other end of the rope hung straight, swaying slightly, and Elisha could not see it for the crowd before him.
Barely knowing he did so, he curled his fist, summoning the death all around him, calling home that terrible hound, whipping a cold wind that frosted the blood on the hands of the rioters, warning them back. Flame was not the only temper of a man.
Gawkers whirled and screamed. A few released their captives, letting loose the terrified wives and children to struggle with the corpses of their men. Others clung tighter, shielding themselves behind the innocent. The frigid brush of death showed upon their clothes, painted with blood—the indelible mark of the murderers.
Elisha found his voice, hoarse with the remnants of his humanity. “Stand aside.”
They obeyed, knocking each other over in their rush. A few thought to escape, but the crowd had grown so thick around them that they had no place to go.
From the end of the rope a man dangled head downward, his hands scraping the pavement, his ankles and legs streaked with blood. They had stripped him to his hose, golden striped cloth garish with fresh crimson. From the waist bruises blackened his flesh, showing the shapes of the boots that made them. The right side of his ribcage looked distorted as he twisted slightly in the hot wind. Blood obscured his shattered face, trailing patterns of droplets and streams onto the ground. If it had not been for the hair—that dark, lustrous hair Elisha had trimmed so many times—the barber would never have recognized his friend.
A rising fury blasted away Elisha’s caution. He sprang toward the flaming buildings and caught Martin’s swinging body in his arms. Cradling the broken skull and crushed ribs against his chest, he faced the men who clung to the rope. One dropped it and fled, straight into the arms of the waiting crowd. The next looked ready to join him, but stopped as their leader spoke.
“Who the devil’re you?” shouted the giant of a man at the head of the trio. Blood spattered his face and boots and, for a moment, Elisha mistook him for Morag, the dead necromancer.
Elisha raised his chin and forced back the numbness of his shock. “I am your death if you do not release him.”
The man laughed with the overblown vigor of a drunk or a bully. “Can’t very well take me down with a corpse in your hands.” His large face crinkled with laughter, his big belly shaking with his shoulders.
Behind him, his companion mustered a grin and shouted, “Yeah!”
The power of death gathered in the pit of Elisha’s stomach, a black and roiling mass longing for exercise. He drew breath, and death rose within him. It spread through his body like a frost, feathering his lungs and heart and flaring down into his fingertips and toes, chilling his nose and lips. His breath puffed out in a cloud of white against the roiling smoke. So close to, the fire should have warmed him, but even such heat could not reach him.
Martin’s blood seeped through to Elisha’s skin, slicking his hands. It sizzled, then froze against the brand upon his chest. Through the tingling of his spread-thin self, Elisha felt that blood. Every spatter marking the boots that had battered Martin, every streak that stained someone’s clothes or marked the brooms and tools and sticks they carried, every stain that rimmed the features of the laughing man—each one cried out to Elisha with the touch of his friend. He focused his power on the man with the rope.
The laughing man hiccoughed, darted a glance to Elisha’s still face, and grinned to the surrounding crowd as if to show he’d gotten the best of the stranger. Someone told him to drop the rope—voices as thin and distant as clouds.
The blood sang into Elisha’s heart. Madoc and Helena appeared, their lips moving, gesturing toward the fire Elisha had all but forgotten. The blood alone he remembered and the brutal man who wore it. Contact.
The man’s smile froze, and he shuddered, his head twitching, trying to shake away the sensations that crept over his body. Death stroked his skin and pinched his cheeks. He jumped aside, whirling, wrapping the rope around his arm, his glance returning to Elisha’s face. The grin returned, twisting, as his lips spasmed. One hand scrubbed at his face, smearing the blood. He prodded his cheek, his eyes flaring wide as the flesh shriveled beneath his touch.
Screaming, the man slapped and clawed his face. His eyes darted back again, and his hand flew open, releasing the rope, shaking it free. He backed away, waving his hands. “I’ve done it! Make it stop! By God, make it stop!”
Martin’s full weight sagged into Elisha’s arms as the rope slid free and tumbled around them. It mattered not, for the strength of eternity supported him and flowed through him—and onward, an awful, inevitable wave. Every person who wore Martin’s blood stopped as they felt the frigid power pass over them, as they suddenly felt the force of what they had done. The blood froze painfully into their skin, dark stains that would mark their shame forever. Some prayed, some wept. A few came close enough to touch Elisha’s arm, but they did not dare. Their leader, no longer laughing, collapsed, his body heaving with sobs.
“Elisha.”
The voice came so softly, he almost missed it in the chaos that filled him.
“Elisha,” sighed through his being, changing the blood song as it echoed through a hundred different contacts. “Let them go.”
“No,” he said through clenched teeth, but the ice trembled.
“Let them go, for they know not what they do.”
With a snapping of his will, Elisha severed contact, shoving the ferocious swell of death back to its dark hole deep inside. He sagged to his knees, clutching Martin against him, clinging to the slender warmth that touched his flesh. Cupping Martin’s battered head, Elisha gently turned his skill inward, seeking out the injuries through the knowledge in his hands. Broken ribs, he knew. That would be the easy part. The bruising and torn flesh of his ankles and hands could be healed, but Elisha shuddered at the ruin of Martin’s face. As he held his friend, careful not to inflict more harm, Elisha studied the broken eye sockets and torn skin, the blood-smeared mouth that once had touched his own. Against his gentle palm, shards of bone shifted with his every measured breath. Clear fluid oozed from Martin’s ears; his brain itself was wounded and that was a wound Elisha had neither knowledge nor skill to heal. Martin’s presence faded in and out from Elisha’s awareness, flickering as the light all around them.
“Martin!” A disheveled woman, her dress ripped open from the neck to reveal skin a few shades too pale, dropped down beside them. “Does he live?”
Elisha knew not how to answer.
“Elisha,” moaned Martin’s voice within. “My house is burning.”
“The city is burning, Martin. Hundreds of houses.” And Elisha could no more save them than he could reassemble the ruin of Martin’s skull.
“I’m his wife, Ysabeau. Tell me what to do. I’ll do anything.” She lifted her husband’s arm, carefully laying it upon his chest, stroking him gently. “He thought he could reason with them.”
&n
bsp; The buildings behind gave an ominous groan.
“Bring me there,” whispered Martin inside Elisha’s skin. The focus drifted apart, Martin’s presence dwindling again.
Elisha pursued the tortured spirit through a spiral of heat and pain and darkness, a welcoming, comfortable darkness that felt so cold. The tendrils of power he had laid through Martin’s body shivered as Ysabeau worked her fine, uncalloused fingers under the rope at her husband’s ankles.
Something shimmered against Elisha’s awareness, and he caught at it, all of his strength trained upon this instant. Sensation blossomed under his touch. For a moment, light bathed him, and a joy in his presence, a celebration of himself that brought heat to his cheeks and tears to his eyes. That feeling swelled in his own heart, envisioning Martin’s happiness, and his brief misery at parting from a lover only to revel at the pursuit of the next. If any man had known how to live, it was Martin.
Ysabeau touched his shoulder, her tone pleading and broken with tears of her own. “We need to move,” she said. “The houses will fall any moment.” Her voice shook against a backdrop of prayers and cries.
“Clear the street,” Elisha said. “Move everyone toward Saint Paul’s. The fire’s moving too fast.”
“Bring me there,” Martin repeated. “I can stop the fire.”
“You’re not strong enough.”
“Transmutation of elements,” murmured Martin’s voice, stronger now even as his warmth receded. “Fire to water.”
“It can’t be done.”
Behind him, someone screamed. The ground shuddered as a house collapsed and splinters singed his face and arms. Elisha ducked his head, huddling over Martin, defending him the best way he knew how.
The flickering presence rallied, surging with a renewal of that curious joy, sending comfort and faith and a distant hope. “Elisha,” sang Martin through his blood, his bones, his heart, “there’s power enough if you let me die.”
Elisha Rex Page 3