by J. C.
Her goading struck a chord, and he stepped back, voice ragged. "You will not speak to me this way."
"Yes, my lord."
She could not disobey, but she would now openly despise him.
It took a little more time for Corische to fully grasp what she had become, and in turn, he began losing his contentment. More often than not, his frustration caused him to behave like a mannerless thug. Teesha, so much the noble in all things that mattered now, made him look coarse and low when they were seen together. No matter how he tried, he couldn't catch up on the few years she'd spent training herself while he played at his rank like an uneducated soldier. He reacted with anger, threatening her into submission, which she readily gave because she knew it wormed into him even sharper. If she altered herself and began looking and behaving like Teesha the serving girl again, how would his noble acquaintances respond? She was the only true hold he had upon his place in rank and society.
He changed tactics and began anew. First came the compliments whispered in her ear at feasts for guests—and all watching saw the eagerness in his eyes and the revulsion in hers, mixed with a touch of well-played fear. Then came the gifts, such as a pearl necklace shaped like petals he presented her at a holiday dance given by a neighboring lord. She flinched with a shudder as he put it around her neck, her eyes like a doe's running from the hunter. And last, and only once, in private he tried to confess how fond he'd grown of her—how deeply fond—and was answered by her flat and cold expression.
Corische began going on long hunts, sometimes staying out all night, only to arrive home in time to beat the dawn.
If Teesha felt even the slightest sorrow regarding her existence, it only involved Edwan, who watched somewhere unseen. But she hid it away carefully, especially when she began to play seriously with Rashed.
By now, it was no secret to any in the household that he adored her in a white knight manner. For all his passionless ways, Teesha had made it so. She sewed him fine clothes, comforted him with kind words, and took over mundane tasks like arranging for his laundry. She made a point of seeing to his needs first. Stepping up the process, she began to sometimes approach him as he worked on accounts, placing a tiny hand on his shoulder while speaking with him. As always, she pushed aside thoughts about the solid feel of his collarbone and reminded herself that he was her tool. When she was alone again, Edwan appeared in her room, on the verge of despair.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Seducing that desert man."
"We need him, Edwan." She spoke flatly and calmly, without anger or sorrow. "Can I drive a stake through Corische's heart? Can you? Can you lift the bar from the doors?"
Her husband moaned and vanished in a flash. She regretted his pain, but the situation couldn't be helped. They needed Rashed.
The next night, her master rose and left at full sundown. She sat by the fire pit, sewing. When Rashed walked in, she smiled at him. He nodded, turned to leave, and then stopped.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Sewing a table runner."
Rashed shook his head as he stepped up to stand in front of her, knowing she was well aware of what he meant.
"I know you despise Corische. But there are aspects of him you don't know. He is glorious in battle. That is where his power lies."
"Is that why you followed him?"
Rashed looked hard at her, perhaps finally suspicious. "Do you honestly want to hear this? I thought you cared little for the past."
"Certain aspects of the past are quite important to me. I'd like to know how someone like yourself became a slave to a low-born creature unfit to kneel at your feet."
Stunned by her bluntness, Rashed paced for a moment, his face filled with puzzlement.
"I was fighting near the west of il'Mauy Meyauh, a kingdom of the Suman Empire across the sea. My people were at war with a group of the free tribes of the desert. I don't know where Corische came from, only that his own master died by accident in a fire. I did not understand at the time, but now wonder how one of our kind could ever fall to an accident. Once free, Corische wanted to secure himself by creating his own pack of servants. He was careful, and only chose men easy to control like Ratboy… and Parko, my brother."
"Parko disappeared from our camp one night. I followed his trail and found Corische. We fought. Even as just a mortal, I made him earn his victory. In the end, he pierced my heart. As I bled to death, he made me an offer. At that moment, all I could think of was that Parko would never get along without me. Strange, foolish thought. When I awoke, I was Corische's servant. He took my inheritance and forced us all to travel north. We crossed the sea into Belaski. In Stravina, he found patronage under a powerful mortal lord. The master and I distinguished ourselves in battle for him. In five short years, we were appointed here, to Gäestev Keep. After the warmth of the south, this place was a frozen prison until…"
"Until I came and made it beautiful?" Teesha finished, almost impishly.
He nodded silently.
Teesha could see him slipping into the relief he'd gained since she'd started making changes in the keep, but this time she wasn't going to allow him that release.
"This isn't our home," she hissed, and Rashed back-stepped once in surprise at her sudden change of tone. "No matter what I've done to it, it's his. We merely exist here. And that's all we'll ever have!"
Rashed stared at her for a time longer than any silence Teesha could remember between two people. His eyes were no longer filled with suspicion. He was confused, and Teesha's long careful nurturing of his desires began to take hold.
"What would you have us do?" he finally asked.
"Leave, go southwest to the coast, make our own home."
"You know we can't," he said gently. "He will always be our master."
"Not if he's dead… finally dead."
Now it was Rashed who changed his demeanor, voice cold, hushed, and almost vicious.
"Don't say such things." He dropped to sit on the bench, glaring at her, but his eyes shifted about as if he was looking for Corische to suddenly enter the room.
"Why not? It's true," Teesha retorted. "You serve him, but I see the anger under that cold mask you wear. You bought his rise in power with your family's money and your own skills. Yet he treats you—all of us—like property, nothing more, and we will never escape until he is gone." She slid off the bench and knelt, touching his leg, her voice low to match his. "If I stay with him much longer, I'll find a way to end my existence."
Rashed pulled back but continued to stare down at her. "If he were gone, would you leave this place with me?"
"Yes, and we'd take Ratboy and Parko. We could make our own home."
Rashed finally stepped completely away and walked toward the heavy front door. He stopped and half turned, but he did not look at her. His jaw clenched.
"No, it's not possible." He jerked the door open with both hands. "Don't speak of this again."
But the seeds were properly planted. Alternately kind and cruel to Corische, Teesha easily managed to keep him home more often. Sometimes she flattered him, and he drank and fed upon her words. Sometimes, out of Rashed's presence, she would quietly insult Corische, making cutting guesses about his low birth. Behaving more and more like a fool of desire, he restrained himself from lashing out, shrank back, and sought some new way to solicit her approval. He never gave her verbal orders. She became the master and he the slave, and she despised him all the more for it.
Corische may not have let his anger out at Teesha, but it still burned inside him. In a fit of rage and frustration one night, he broke the handle off a broom and beat Parko with it. Such an action could never have harmed one of them, but Rashed came running in to see why his brother yelped out in fear. He did not interfere, but Teesha saw clouds darker than disapproval pass over his desert warrior's face.
At every opportunity, Teesha drove Corische to desperation, especially when Rashed was nearby, seeking to portr
ay their master as a petty abuser—which he was—and Ratboy, Parko, and herself as the abused. Rashed's expression grew more grim each night. Teesha bought a painting of the seacoast and hung it above the hearth as a less-than-subtle reminder, one that Corische wouldn't comprehend. She managed to quietly call Rashed's attention to it whenever possible. Large and well-crafted, the painting with its dark, cresting waves was a physical image of what they did not have—freedom to leave and see new places.
There finally came a night when she knew Rashed was on the edge. She tried several times to engage him in conversation, but he refused to respond. It was time for the last step. And Teesha waited until the following evening, when all five of them had barely arisen after dusk.
They were gathered in the main room, busy with mundane activities, and she leaned in close to Corische's ear, and whispered, "I believe I met your mother a few nights ago. She was a gypsy hag working in a caravan tent, selling herself for two coppers per man."
All her other jibes had been callously elite, copied from the manner with which she'd seen nobles insult the lower classes and carefully played so that Corische's ego might construe them as possibly goading instead of contemptuous. But this base comment was a lewd, open barb, the like of which had never passed her lips.
Corische's nostrils widened and for a moment he was stricken into stillness. He struck her across the face hard enough to knock her from the hearth bench and smash her small body into the stone wall.
Teesha blinked in pain. Her head pounded, and the room appeared to grow dark. One moment, barely a blink, stretched itself to a length she couldn't measure. All she could hear in the darkness inside her head was a ringing that played in her ears. Not a word from anyone. She had made a mistake in judging Rashed's mood. Corische would not be played with this way ever again, not after what she'd just done.
Finally, some of the darkness cleared. Corische stood over the bench, his arm just finishing its swing. Behind him, Rashed was lunging across the center oak table. His face was twisted in rage, his mouth wide with extended fangs, and a fierce growl ripped from the back of his throat. His right hand swept down to snatch the hilt of Corische's sheathed sword lying upon the table.
Corische turned at the cry of rage behind him. His eyes did not grow wide in surprise but narrowed like an angry dog's, cornered down an alley. Mouth open, his voice started to issue a command Rashed would not be able to refuse.
Rashed drew back his arm and flicked his wrist in a blur. The sheath slid up the sword's blade on his backswing, and before it even cleared the blade tip, the weapon swung forward.
Teesha heard a slight cracking sound when the blade cut through Corische's neck. His head bounced off the hearth's mantle, a spray of black liquid spattering the wall.
The sheath finally clattered to the floor.
Teesha crumpled down against the wall. Rashed landed on the near side of the table as Corische's body collapsed where it stood. The head rolled across the floor to bounce off Ratboy's boot.
Teesha blinked again. That was all the time it took.
After years of preparing moment by moment, everything changed in an instant. Teesha watched the near-black liquid, too dark for living blood, pour out of the corpse's neck stump onto straw-covered stones. It was the only movement in the room.
Parko was the first to disturb the stillness. He giggled quietly, nervously, then leaped across the floor like a cat to crouch at the body, sniffing. He laughed hysterically.
Ratboy began stammering. "You… killed him."
All the rage in Rashed was gone. He stood limply, sword dangling in his hand at his side, as he stared down at the headless body. His face looked as white as the snow. Then he looked up to find Teesha watching him.
She wasn't about to let him slip and fall back now.
"Are you sorry?" she asked almost accusingly. "Do you regret this?"
"It's too late for that now," Rashed answered. He dropped the sword to clatter on the floor and lifted Teesha to her feet gently with both hands. She said nothing, but kept staring at him, waiting as if she hadn't heard his first answer. Something of his anger came back and the muscles in his jaw tightened.
"No, I'm not sorry," he added.
She gripped his forearms, or as much of them as her small hands could take in. In the air over Rashed's shoulder, she thought she saw Edwan's wispish form hovering in the rafters.
"We're free," she whispered.
She had not failed. Corische was dead, and they had no master. They were free. Joy rushed through her, and she wanted to laugh, but she came back to her senses as Rashed pulled away.
He reached up and took the seacoast painting off the wall.
"Everyone gather what you want with you. We leave tonight."
"Leave?" Ratboy sputtered. He was still standing dumbly as before, staring at Corische's headless body. "What are you talking about? Where are we going?"
Teesha walked with a smile over to Ratboy, still slightly uncertain on her feet. He stared at her with wide brown eyes. With a gentle touch, she pushed him toward the stairs to their lower chambers for the last time.
"To the sea."
* * * *
Edwan jerked away from Teesha's mind, away from memories he could no longer stand to relive. In the silence, neither of them even heard the waves collapsing onto the shore of Miiska.
"Why?" he asked, his empty voice anguished. "Why show me these ugly visions? Go back before… to the tavern."
"No."
"To the day we met, to the first time we—"
"No, my love." She shook her head. "To understand where you are, you must see where you've been, and not just the sweet parts."
"I am in torment!" Edwan cried, shaking her completely out of the past and into the present.
"My love," she whispered, regretting his pain. "Let's walk among the dark streets and pretend we are high in the north, children again, in distant days."
"Yes." He drew near, instantly appeased, and she reached out for his hand. Although she could not grasp it, the cold mist of him settled around her slender fingers.
* * * *
Ratboy watched a sleeping girl through the loose window shutters of a cottage, her dark hair spread out on the pillow, her breathing light and even. She didn't look anything like the girl he'd ripped and drained not many nights ago, but he felt the taste of blood running on his tongue with the memory. And the merchant on the road, taken so easily.
Who made these absurd rules that killing mortals would not be allowed? Did all of their kind follow such laws? Parko had not.
First there had been Corische enforcing his strict guidelines, desiring power and nobility among mortals. Now there was Rashed dominating every aspect of their existence, Rashed with his disgusting sense of honor, his obsession with safety and mortal trappings. Weren't they Noble Dead? Wasn't that enough? No undead in his right mind would wish to become a mortal lord, or own a warehouse and earn a mortal living. Lately, Ratboy had begun to suspect Corische and Rashed were the mad ones, the twisted ones, not him, not Parko.
The girl rolled over in her slumber and raised a lovely tanned arm above her head. The movement caused Ratboy to tense, to smell the warm blood beneath her skin.
"What are you watching, my sweet?" a quiet voice said beside him.
He did not jump or even turn to look. It was only Teesha. He pointed through the window.
"Her."
"It's not wise to feed in their homes. You know this."
"I know many things. I'm not certain I agree anymore."
Her hand rose and stroked the back of his hair.
"Shhhhh," she whispered. "It's not far to dawn. Come and find easier prey. You must think of our home. You must think of me."
Closing his eyes at the feel of her touch, Ratboy slipped away from the window. Yes, he'd be cautious for her. But as they turned down the street together, he still remembered the sleeping, tan-armed girl.
Chapter Eight
Four nights later, Ma
giere stood behind The Sea Lion's bar, feeling a little more comfortable in her daily schedule. Out on the road, she and Leesil had developed a type of routine involving traveling, making camp, planning, manipulating feigned battles, and then beginning the process all over again. These events were interspersed with their experiences in new towns, villages, and Leesil's gambling. Now things were different. Her entire staff stayed up half the night serving guests, then slept late in the mornings. Leesil spent his afternoons working on the roof, while Beth-rae cooked, Caleb cleaned, and Magiere handled supplies, stocked shelves, and kept the house accounts. Chap watched over Rose. They always ate an early supper together before opening for customers. Magiere was continuously clean, warm, and slept in a bed every night.
Physical comfort and a unique sense of structure were not the only aspects of this life which brought her peace. For the first time, she was giving back to a community instead of draining it. The sailors, fisherfolk, and shopkeepers who patronized The Sea Lion enjoyed themselves and had a space of relief from their hard work. It did bother her when Leesil would mention the hushed whispers that often reached his ears about Magiere, "Hunter of the Dead." Perhaps she had become a local attraction. She could only guess how such rumors began, although she'd not seen either Welstiel nor the imposing nobleman again. Magiere suspected Leesil might still be drinking himself to sleep some nights, but as long as he stayed sober at the faro table and picked no pockets, she had no complaints.
Beth-rae walked up to the bar, carrying a full tray of empty mugs and looking a bit weary. A few strands of her silver, braided hair hung in loose wisps.
"Four more ales for Constable Ellinwood and his guards," she said.
Magiere glanced at the table of loud men, but didn't comment while drawing the ale. One customer she could often count on was Ellinwood. Her distaste for the self-important man only grew with familiarity.
She set the mugs back on Beth-rae's tray, and the front door opened, letting in a cool breeze. No one entered, but she saw a head of brilliant red hair in the doorway with a close-trimmed beard of the same flaming color that hid his chin, cheeks, and upper lip. A burly man, perhaps in his late twenties, wearing a leather vest, he stood half in and half out, hesitating. He scanned the room and stopped upon seeing Constable Ellinwood. His jaw tightened, and Magiere knew there would be trouble.