Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth)

by Matthew Medina

  “You’re...refusing to buy this?” Catelyn asked, quietly shocked.

  Silena simply nodded. Catelyn focused her bubble entirely on Silena, listened to her pulse and her breathing, smelling her sweat. Catelyn was surprised at what they told her. Silena exuded complete and utter inner calm. And not a trace of deception. This was not, as she had briefly suspected, simply a ploy to take advantage of Catelyn, by refusing to buy and pretending not to be interested in a vain attempt to drive the price down. Catelyn felt herself deflate.

  To her surprise, Silena was there, steadying her with a hand on her elbow, as Catelyn tried to understand what was happening. Catelyn had expected a number of scenarios, but a merchant refusing to buy such an exquisite and exclusive item had not been on her list of possibilities, and she was completely taken off guard by the response.

  “What...But, Silena, why?” she said aloud.

  “It is not for me. It was meant for you,” was all she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Only the Divines know, my child. I would guess that this came to you for a reason, by Their hands. I cannot defy that, nor would I wish to.”

  Catelyn was as confused by these words as she was surprised. She thought that she was one of the last people in the Seat to believe in the Divines, though her faith had dwindled to almost nothing these last few sojourns. She certainly didn’t expect a pragmatic woman like Silena to have faith in them.

  Silena reached out to take Catelyn’s hands, passed the weapon back to her, then clasped them around the handle with warmth and reassurance. The exchange surprised both of them somewhat, both for the act, and for what it represented. Catelyn pulled her hands away, feeling hope crash around her, a feeling she was all too familiar with, and returned the weapon to its temporary home in the loop of leather on her belt.

  Silena, still standing just inside arm’s length, spoke.

  “Catelyn, I deal in curiosities, and in things that, though valuable to some, are practically useless to people living today. This...this is something far more important. It is not meant to be traded like some trinket found in the rubble.”

  Even this admonishment was delivered with warmth and compassion, and Catelyn felt something she hadn’t felt in six sojourns; genuine tenderness. Silena reached out, once again putting both of her hands on Catelyn’s upper arms. Catelyn could feel the rough paper feel of her hands, the skin wrinkled and callused, the fingers bony and crooked with age. When Silena spoke again, there wasn’t a trace of the coolness Silena was used to putting in her voice. It was like she had been transformed by the brief contact with the weapon.

  “Even if it weren’t the case that this was more valuable than to be simply traded, if I were to show something like this to anyone else, the Empire would have soldiers in my stall dragging me off to an interrogation room the very next day, never to be seen again. In that, the Divines have truly been watching over you that They directed you to me, instead of some other merchant who would have led to you ruin, certainly.

  “I’m old enough that if I were to be taken by the Imperials, I could not withstand the techniques that they use, and they would discover where, and from whom, I had acquired such an item. Then they would come after you.”

  Silena’s hands on Catelyn’s arms gave a warm squeeze.

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” Silena said, this last part full of warmth and emotion choking her voice, and Catelyn felt a stabbing pain in her heart, as an echo from her past erupted into her consciousness at the similarity to words she had heard sojourns ago.

  “We won’t let anyone hurt you, Catey,” her parents had promised. That promise had been broken.

  Silena paused, composing herself, coughing to cover her obvious emotional struggle as she let her hands drop back to her sides.

  “I wouldn’t like that,” she continued. “You seem like a nice girl just trying to stay alive and you’ve got to stay away from trouble like that.

  Catelyn, now taken aback both by Silena’s refusal and her display of emotions, considered what she herself was feeling before speaking.

  “It’s true that I live quietly, in the shadows. I have my reasons. And I don’t wish to change that if it means taking such a huge risk. But I also went through something...horrible to acquire this and I hate to simply abandon it.”

  Silena reacted with dismay to this last part.

  “Abandon it? What on Ereas makes you think the Divines would give you such a gift only to have you abandon it? This is Their doing; surely you can see that. I don’t know the depth of your faith, but hopefully now you see the depth of mine.

  “And whatever else you might think about that item and its purpose in coming to you, you and I both know what an exceptional weapon it is. All other factors aside, I can’t think of a better companion for a young girl who lives alone in a place like this.”

  Catelyn grunted. In truth, she wished to tell Silena that she did believe in the Divines, that she too prayed to them. And that she agreed that the Divines had brought this thing into her life. But she was afraid to speak those beliefs aloud, for fear that it would not be those words that she spoke, but those of the other voice inside her. The words of the voice who pointed out how many times the Divines had failed to help her before. The voice who increasingly spoke to her of how she had no reason to believe they would start helping her any more now.

  She still felt comforted by her faith and said all the words, but the Divines; Mother, Father and Child were, in her mind at least, merely silent watchers. Catelyn’s beliefs were...complicated, and growing harder and harder for her to justify.

  “I’ll admit that I have thought often of keeping it, if only to study the faces of the people carved into the handle. But selling it would keep me alive longer than if I simply studied it.”

  Silena once more reached out and squeezed Catelyn’s hands, a gesture that both women were becoming more and more comfortable with, and Catelyn once again smelled and felt the layer of warmth encompassing the pair. The remembrance of these kind of feelings threatened to bring to the surface painful memories that she had long ago buried, and so Catelyn broke contact with Silena, which elicited a clear sense of disappointment in the older woman.

  But Silena simply sighed, and spoke one more.

  “I am truly sorry that I can’t help you, Catelyn. I will pray to the Divines for you, and ask for Them to bless you with Their guidance.”

  There was a pause and then Silena tentatively asked a question.

  “It may not be any of my business, but I feel compelled to ask. How did you come by this in the first place?”

  Catelyn felt the blood drain from her face, and a stab of panic nearly overwhelmed her. She felt so many conflicting emotions right at this moment, and she struggled to rein in some of them lest she lose herself in the deepness of the longing she felt to completely trust someone again. But she hesitated. Did she trust Silena enough to reveal the circumstances of that night? Catelyn ran it over in her mind, trying to decide, while Silena waited calmly, patiently. That calm was what decided it for Catelyn.

  In the end she decided to be truthful, but only divulge enough truth as necessary.

  “I got it from a...man. From Dane Eyrris.”

  Suddenly, Silena’s demeanor towards her completely changed. All of Catelyn’s senses could detect the shift that had taken place between them. Where she had been all warmth and kindness a moment ago, she was now cold as ice and wary of betrayal. When she spoke, it was with a dangerous edge to her voice, and Catelyn could smell the tang of fear as Silena’s guard came back up. She responded coolly.

  “I make a point not to put my nose in anyone’s business where it’s not wanted, but if I were you, I wouldn’t continue to deal with...creatures...like Dane Eyrris.”

  Hearing this cold retort after their previous exchanges felt to Catelyn like a punch in the gut, like a splash of ice cold water in a warm, luxurious bath. The shock Catelyn felt must have registered on her face, because Silena so
ftened her tone.

  “I’m sorry. Don’t despair, dear girl. Not for a second do I think you’re a part of that world. I’ve got enough sense to see that you haven’t made friends with that pack of wild dogs. And only the Divines may judge the things you feel that you need to do to survive. I’m simply advising that you steer well clear of any of the animals that call themselves Dane. They belong to a cult of sorts, which they call the Sado-Sexual Elite. You don’t want to know what they do to earn their place in that den of evil.”

  Catelyn didn’t have the heart to tell Silena that she already knew all about that side of the Dane and his friends, but with her warning delivered, Catelyn felt a palpable wave of relief that Silena was still friendly with her.

  As she stood listening to Silena talk, hearing her heart beat and the woman’s strong, kindly voice, the cadence of her breathing, Catelyn silently promised herself that she would make a point of spending more time getting to know this woman. Although the exchange hadn’t worked out the way she had planned, having the chance to talk to Silena and to get to know her and experience a moment of unguarded interaction with another person had been more rewarding than she could have imagined.

  With no business to conduct, Silena said a heartfelt goodbye and departed with her bodyguard in tow, and Catelyn waited until they passed out of her sensory bubble and then climbed back to the rooftops and traveled gracefully along the eaves and gutters of the Seat towards her roost, a lopsided grin on her face and a feeling of pure joy warming her heart, both of which were extreme rarities in Catelyn’s world.

  If she stopped and thought about it, she would have connected these feelings to ones she had felt many sojourns before, when she had been a small child, comforted and warmed by the loving arms of her mother.

  Chapter 5

  After the meeting at the abandoned bank with Silena they had established a high degree of trust, and Catelyn began making regular visits each span to her market stall to make conversation with the woman, her enthusiasm for this part of her new routine was palpable, but she worked to make it so that it was not plain for all to see. To an outside observer, Catelyn put on the act of being the same nuisance she had been prior to that night, moving from stall to stall, browsing but never buying. And to her credit, Silena played along as well, always shooing her away at the end of each of their exchanges. Only the two of them, young and old, knew the true value and purpose of these exchanges: the solidifying of something neither of them had expected to find in the Seat. Friendship.

  Catelyn began to feel a closeness with Silena that she hadn’t felt since her parent’s deaths. She still reserved a part of her heart, hiding deep within her inner defenses, to protect her from what she knew must inevitably happen. But for the first time since that terrible day six sojourns ago, Catelyn found that she was not only willing, but able to open herself to another person.

  Several of their visits were camouflaged using small talk, as they both felt that other buyers within earshot need not know the depth of this burgeoning relationship. It wouldn’t do for Catelyn to lose her mystique, nor for Silena to lose her perceived edge as a shrewd merchant, and so when others were near they chatted idly about the city, the weather or that day’s business.

  But Catelyn longed for those moments when the two of them had the stall to themselves. During those conversations, the two women were free to drop the pretense of merchant and customer, and share genuine pieces of themselves.

  Silena shared with Catelyn in a hushed voice all about her youthful defiance of the Empire, and the toll that such actions had cost her. Catelyn, in return, had described the many tribulations her parents had faced as chosen parents, and later, their pointless deaths. Catelyn had been numb most of her days since that one, but on the days when she and Silena could confide in one another, she felt deeply, and the two of them would both need to restrain their emotions, lest their shared tragedies overwhelm them.

  It certainly wouldn’t help either of them to collapse into sobs and wailing before the entire marketplace. But those more intimate visits over the next few spans were the exception, not the rule.

  Truthfully, it wasn’t solely company that Catelyn sought in these regular visits to see Silena, it was also information. The first visit, Silena had informed Catelyn that because of her position, she was able to employ a variety of techniques and spies throughout the marketplace which kept her informed about the things that were happening in the Seat. It had helped her immeasurably in the past to know when to buy, when to sell, and when to keep her head down.

  And within the first few visits, Silena began to report to Catelyn what she was hearing about the Dane’s, and as Catelyn suspected would be the case, their efforts to recover their precious artifact and find the thief who was responsible. Silena stressed the danger to her every time she visited, and after hearing through her network that the Danes were escalating their search, Catelyn opted to forgo any further forays and stay in the shadows for a while, until the worst had passed.

  Catelyn had lived on the streets a long time, and she knew how to survive for spans with the minimum she needed to survive, including the need to sometimes ration herself when times were tough. Catelyn wished to be out there, to be free to leap across the rooftops and to continue to visit Silena whenever she wanted, but she had a feeling that the days ahead would challenge her in ways that she never had been before. So instead of plying her trade, she spent her nights quiet and alone in her roost training both her body and her senses.

  The remainder of the time when she wasn’t training she spent at home, examining the weapon but also maintaining the inventions she had crafted over the sojourns to make her life easier. This was a case where her book habit as a child had paid off, enabling her to construct a number of devices which allowed her to take advantage of certain luxuries many others in the Seat simply did without, like the system of pipes she had designed to heat her roost and purify the rainwater collected from the roof that she used for drinking and bathing.

  She also spent at least a prayer each day feeling her way along the handle of the weapon, mostly to study the faces. Each time, she traced the handle in the same way, but starting with a different figure each time. She would begin at one end, and work her way toward the other, where the handle transitioned into the shaft that swiftly flattened to become the blade, as smoothly as poured glass.

  She wasn’t quite sure why the faces on the handle had so captivated her attention, but they did. For some reason, she kept getting the strange feeling that she should somehow recognize some of the faces, but of course she knew that was absurd. The weapon was older than her, presumably. And if Silena could be believed, was likely even made hundreds of sojourns ago in the Before. If the artist who had sculpted the likenesses on the handle had even used real people as guides, those people would surely be long dead.

  Still, she found that the act of examining the faces comforted her in some strange way. To feel the faces and the bodies beneath her fingers, to feel the sensuous curves of the forms, and marvel at the perfection of the captured likenesses filled her with a sense of awe that she had never experienced before now. She was becoming so familiar now with the various shapes, that she thought soon she might be able to identify them all by memory.

  Meanwhile the details on the blade, although clearer than they had been before, still eluded her. The lines etched into the steel just weren’t deep enough for her fingers to make out more than general shapes, and Catelyn knew that was worthy of mention in and of itself. She actually began to wonder if their delicate nature called into question whether they were etchings at all, but rather paintings or images inlaid into the metal somehow. She had never even heard of such a thing, but she had also never felt anything this exquisite before.

  Catelyn was not one to dwell on past mistakes or regrets, but in this, she cursed herself that she hadn’t asked Silena to describe what she saw on the surface of the blade that night she had handled the weapon. Perhaps she would get the chance again a
t some point, but it was not possible to ask further questions about it of her now, not without exposing herself to great risk, and raising suspicion.

  She was so curious about the etchings that she even considered setting up another secret meeting for the two of them, in order to have Silena describe what she saw upon the blade. This last mystery was eating away at Catelyn, to the point where she had even begun wishing she had her sight back so that she could see it with her own eyes, something that almost never happened.

  Frustrated, and more than a little bored, Catelyn placed the weapon down in the case, still lying open on her shelf, then climbed up to her sleeping area, slipped under the blankets and fell fast asleep.

  Catelyn stood in the dank hallway, scanning it back and forth with her bubble, trying to find a trace of something familiar. Something that would mark this occasion or harken back to her former life, here with her family. But she could detect nothing, and the emptiness stretched before her like a vast gulf between her old life and her new.

  Catelyn had counted the days, and she knew that this day was exactly one sojourn from the day when her parents had been brutally murdered and her life had been changed forever. The hallway leading to the room where her parents had died smelled of musty wood and rank pools of water, and she wondered whether anyone had stepped foot in the building since the day she had abandoned it for good.

  Even though she had established her new home just across the street, she’d had no desire to go back to her old home. She had reasoned that there was nothing there worth going back for. Her memories of those times, hard as they were, now formed the basis for her to find the will to struggle through each day. And struggle she had.

  There had been a constant stream of worries the entire sojourn, but there were two things that had pulled her through, the bubble of senses which she spent every spare moment learning to hone and perfect, and the memories of her loving parents.

  As she stepped gingerly through the debris-strewn hallway, the cold grimy water squashing under her soles and between her toes, she felt her heart beginning to pound in fear of what she might find in the remains of her old life.