Ortis took off after the boy, his long legs carrying him into the alley quickly and strongly, gaining on the boy quicker than the boy had anticipated. When the boy heard something behind him, he turned and gaped when he saw Ortis barreling down on him.
The boy is probably used to getting away with this, he thought.
The boy stumbled, and Ortis caught up to him before they reached the end of the alley. Not that it would have mattered, as the alley seemed to be a dead end, and the only exit from the far side was blocked with a massive pile of refuse piled two paces high.
Ortis stood over the boy, who simply cowered and offered the purse to him in surrender. He had enough street smarts to know when he was beaten, and was likely trying to save himself from the literal interpretation of that outcome. Ortis, at one time, would have killed this boy for his insolence. For daring to steal from the Empire itself.
But that Ortis was dead. He was someone else now. He was something else. And whoever he was now, he simply reached out and took the purse from the boy. As he turned on his heel to return to the street, a thought occurred to him.
“Boy, have you ever seen a blind girl in this area?”
The boy remained silent.
“Well, boy? Are you mute? Deaf?”
“I c’n talk,” the boy said gruffly, looking up at Ortis with his grubby face and bloodshot yellow eyes.
“So?” Ortis grumbled.
“No blind girls. I can get you young girls though. They’s as won’t fight back much.”
Ortis felt a spike of hatred in his guts at the implication. And then once more, the flood of shame erupted inside and he tasted his own bile as he recalled the faces of every child he had ever despoiled. He fought to keep the pain and disgust from his face, and clarified his request for the boy.
“ I don’t mean that. She wouldn’t be like that. She was a thief, like you. Slight build, barefoot and...red hair.” Ortis decided to risk as much detail as he was able, as he didn’t think this child had any connections to the Empire, or to anyone of consequence really.
“Oh, her? Tha’ one what got them Dane’s kilt?”
Ortis grunted in surprise. Apparently word had spread of the girl’s involvement in those events, at least in the streets. In Ortis’ search, he had learned that the Empire itself still had no idea of the girl’s role in what had transpired, and he was relieved by that fact. But if the urchins in the streets knew, he supposed it was only a matter of time until word of her reached Uriel.
“She’s dead,” the boy said simply.
Ortis’ heart squeezed tightly at the words and their finality, and his hands trembled.
“How do you know this?” Ortis roared, reaching out and grabbing the boy’s tiny wrists, feeling his new found purpose slipping away, like sand between his fingers.
“Ow, hey! Le’ go!”
Ortis loosened his grip somewhat, but he didn’t let the boy go. Not until he had his answer.
“Tha’s jus’ what ev’ryun says. She n’ver been seen since. Course, not like she was none too visible ‘fore.”
Ortis processed this, and felt some slight relief that this was merely a rumor, which Ortis well knew could very well be far, far from the truth.
“What else do they say about it, boy?”
“Jus’ tha’ she did the Seat a favor, riddin’ it o’ them damn Danes. Tho’ some curse her tha’ she did’n save them two other girls.”
This caused Ortis to release his grip and take a step back, and the boy wasted no time, and bolted for the back of the alley. Surprisingly, what had appeared to have been a dead end turned out not to have been, as the boy shifted aside some of the filth, revealing a hole through to the other side, and disappeared as fast as anything Ortis had ever seen. If Ortis hadn’t had darker thoughts to peruse in his mind, he might have admired the boy’s ingenuity and courage. He didn’t attempt to pursue the child, but was lost in his own thoughts.
The other two girls. Ortis thought back to that night. He hadn’t given a single moment of thought to the two girls that the thief had rescued that night. He clearly saw them in his mind’s eye, scared and shivering and bleeding from scrapes, but otherwise healthy and whole.
Why does the boy, or anyone for that matter, think they’re dead?
Ortis went over what the boy had just said again, and he could only come to a single conclusion. He knew from witnessing it with his own eyes that the thief had gotten the girls out alive, but the rumor in the streets was that they’d been killed. That was significant. Ortis could only assume that the thief had either taken them in herself, or had taken them to someone to be hidden. Whichever turned out to be the truth, Ortis now had a lead to follow.
Finding the two girls would lead him to his thief. He believed this, because he had to.
The Emperor Uriel, Third of His Name, rode out of the inner gate of the Imperial Citadel on horseback, at the head of six hundred of his finest Imperial soldiers. It had been many sojourns since Uriel had last ridden out at the head of his army, even in a ceremonial fashion. But this new campaign was of the utmost importance, and he trusted no other to take command of it. In truth, he would have entrusted Ortis with such an urgent and important matter, except for the fact that Ortis was in fact a significant part of the problem.
Uriel seethed with fury at the thought of his former commander and lover, who he could only assume had betrayed him just over a span ago, the night that Uriel had ordered him to enact the Purge upon the Dane’s of the Sado-Sexual Elite, a trio of upstarts who had pushed the Emperor too far in their indulgences.
After two days with no word from Ortis, Uriel had sent for Ortis’ second, a cowardly man who had himself refused to report in to the Emperor, out of fear of what Uriel would do to him and his men when he learned that no one under his command had any explanation as to why their commander had simply disappeared into the air.
Uriel was furious, of course, but also concerned, not that he would ever admit this fact to anyone. Ortis was no longer a young man, and he half pictured his old friend suffering from a failure of his heart, and dropping to an ignoble death in some alley in the slums. He had ordered a full sweep of the area, to be sure that Ortis was gone and not simply dead in the streets. He had even ordered the remains of the Purged homes searched, in case Ortis had somehow failed to get out of one of the buildings before it had been consumed by his own fires.
But nothing had been found. And Uriel had felt utterly betrayed, and flew into a rage unlike any he had experienced before. He had felt so livid that he could barely contain himself, but that wasn’t the end of the story of his former confidante, oh no.
Another day went by before Enaz brought something more to his attention. Uriel recalled every word of this exchange, and he struggled to contain his wrath at recalling the conversation.
Enaz had appeared in the hall, his bald head sweating with anxiety, just after the Emperor had broken his fast on poached quail eggs and sliced pork drizzled with the lightest of honey glazes.
“Your Eminence, there is...there is something I feel I must bring to your attention.”
Uriel oft-times hated the man’s deference.
“Enaz, it had better be the location of our “friend” Ortis. If it is not, I will have you flogged.”
Uriel enjoyed making threats against Enaz, specifically so that he could watch the man’s eyes bulge and his sweaty bobbing throat jump up and down as he swallowed back a reply, or perhaps swallowed an ejaculation of bile into his mouth at the thought of what Uriel would do to him, should he displease him in some way.
Enaz continued to look at Uriel in silence, and whenever this happened, Uriel knew that the situation must be unfortunate, indeed. “Spit it out, woman,” he growled at the eunuch.
Enaz cleared his throat.
“Your Eminence, I have just been told by one of my priors that he believes he knows why the Dane’s...defied your Will.” Enaz had withered under Uriel’s gaze at the use of the word defied, but Uriel had b
een intrigued enough by the statement he had just made that he ignored the falter.
“He does, does he? And pray, do tell me, what is this reason?”
And Enaz had gone on to explain at length how the fat prior Pater had approached Enaz after confessions on the day after the Purge, and told of the man’s encounter with Dane Eyrris in the hall of the Priory cycles before. Uriel was about to suggest that Enaz was completely and deliberately wasting his time, and that his death would be arriving swiftly if he didn’t make his point soon, when Enaz let the most interesting detail be known.
“Pater informed me that the Dane was looking to sell a very rare, and seemingly priceless artifact, to some out of town buyers. He tried to convince the Dane to sell it to the Priory instead, but Eyrris would have none of it.” Enaz cleared his throat again, and Uriel could see the man’s nerves getting the better of him.
Uriel on the other hand, was beginning to sweat for another reason altogether. Enaz had used the term “priceless artifact” and this raised Uriel’s interest in the topic significantly.
“Did your fellow prior say whether he saw this artifact? Did he describe it to you?” Uriel felt his hands growing clammy in anticipation of the answer.
“Your Eminence, apart from the shape of the thing, he seemed to be describing one of the weapons.”
Uriel stood up and slapped Enaz hard across the face. Enaz knew better than to bring up the weapons in public, even if it was seemingly just the two of them in the room. The Imperial audience chamber had ears of its own, he knew.
Still, if what Enaz had just told him were true, then after dozens of sojourns, he had finally found another one. Another piece of the set. It was almost within his grasp. Or at least, that was what he had now thought.
“So, where is this artifact now?” Uriel asked, his tension beginning to fade at the prospect of owning another piece of powerful history. But it didn’t last long.
“It would appear that it was with the Dane’s when the Purge was enacted, your Eminence.”
Uriel had roared and kicked Enaz to the ground, his fury exploding out of him like a volcanic eruption. He laid into Enaz with three more kicks before the implications of what Enaz had just said fully sank in. As he paused his leg in mid-kick, he put it all together.
Dane Eyrris had had one of the weapons, that much was clear. That explained why the Dane’s had become so emboldened. Uriel wondered if the weapon they had found was special in the same way that his was. And then Ortis had arrived to enact the Purge. From there, only two possibilities seemed likely.
Either the Dane’s had killed Ortis with the weapon, or Ortis had found out about the weapon, had killed the Dane’s and taken the weapon for himself. Despite the Emperor’s long trust and loyalty to his friend, only one of those outcomes seemed possible, since there had been no trace of Ortis’ body in the wreckage of any of the Dane’s estate. Whatever else he was, Ortis was still a most feared warrior.
The Dane’s could not have bested a man of Ortis’ training. No, there was only one real possibility, which was that Ortis had taken the weapon for himself.
It explained so much.
That had prompted another of Uriel’s outbursts, only this time, he had not even tried to contain himself, and Uriel had butchered five of the chamber workers in the halls before Enaz defied him by clearing every other servant out of the building. For that transgression, Enaz was now stripped of his position and sitting in the most dank dungeon in the Citadel, awaiting a very public execution. But, despite the novelty of this rarely used form of punishment, even that could wait.
If Ortis had indeed taken the weapon for himself, Uriel had no choice but to find him. Before he discovered its potential. Before it changed everything.
And so Uriel rode through the streets towards the last known location of his former commander. His former lover. His former friend. When he found Ortis, and he would, there would be no mercy for their shared time together. Ortis would pay the highest price for this betrayal. And then Uriel would take the weapon, and he would think about what was next for his destiny. This was surely another sign, and Uriel would not ignore it.
Ortis squeezed the throat of the man, named Kenrick, who had reportedly brokered the sale of two girls to Dane Callum just a few spans before the Purge, and considered whether to snap the man’s neck or not.
The Danes were perverse in a number of ways, and their proclivities were well known, but they were also elitists who never got their own hands dirty if they could help it. They used men liked Kenrick, flesh peddlers, to acquire their victims.
Ortis thought briefly that just a few spans ago, he would never have used the word victim to describe the people that were bought and sold to vicious men like the Danes. But seeing the girl thief had changed something fundamental in him. Ortis himself couldn’t explain it, nor did he try. And one of the things that had changed had been how he viewed the people of the Seat.
He had been indiscriminate in his application of justice in the past. Circumstances mattered little, if at all. But Ortis had found a new way, or rather he had found an old way. Because if Ortis really thought about it, he knew that somewhere, buried deeply inside of him, these things he believed now, were the things that had been taught to him as a child. By his father, and by watching his father’s advisers and the other wise men of the Pyric court. And then Uriel had come into his life, and everything had changed.
Uriel’s Will had become his own. And the two of them had become as a force of Nature, uncaring of anything save their own destiny. Or rather, Uriel’s destiny. People like the girls he was now looking for, would simply not have been a concern to the great plans of men like Uriel and himself.
Now, Ortis was filled with another purpose: to find them. And through them, to find her.
Ortis was honest about the fact that there was only a slim hope that finding the girls would lead him to his thief, but once the search had begun, he felt something else rising to the surface of his mind. He felt the need to ensure that the girls were alive, and were well taken care of.
Ortis once again considered the possibility that he had snapped, and that insanity had wrested control of his mind. To have so completely spun away from what he had been, towards whatever it is that he was now...none of it made sense, and yet, to Ortis it did. He knew he could never explain it, and he refused to justify it, even to himself. But he felt it deeply in every fiber of his being.
He needed to do this, and he acted on it involuntarily, until his new way of being became as necessary to him as breathing. For a man with Ortis’ connections and skills, it came naturally.
His present meeting with Kenrick had actually begun earlier that day, when he had, through some sniffing around at a number of wretched establishments, found out about a guard for hire named Warren. Warren reportedly walked into an Imperial apothecary the day after the Purge, asking for ointments or medicines to treat some minor burns. The Imperials had taken one look at his pathetic injuries and turned him away, and Warren had caused a scene, by yelling that he had been brought there by the Imperials to help during the Purge, and so deserved the Empire’s help in return. Warren was an ignorant man to presume that the Empire operated with any sense of fairness whatsoever, even to the men they employed. And they had resorted to removing him unkindly.
Ortis had found Warren easily after that, sitting on a rusted metal stool in the lowest tavern in the Seat, nursing a bottle of foul-smelling wood alcohol in his hands. Ortis could smell the roasted flesh of the man as soon as he had entered the tavern. Warren had been so drunk by that point, in an attempt to numb the pain he was clearly in, that Ortis simply asked his questions, and received the answers.
Warren had told him the whole story of his former partner in crime Jaff, and their brief run-in with the slender thief with the red hair. What Ortis found hard to believe was when Warren had described how she’d single-handedly butchered the massive oaf named Jaff. But no matter how he asked, always Warren repeated the same lie.
Warren did admit to not having actually seen it with his own eyes, but had heard it through a door that had been wedged shut by the girl. That made his account of the events unreliable at best.
What made Ortis smile however, was in his description of two young girls who were with the thief. The Danes were of course no strangers to pederasty, but one detail about the girls in question stood out, and would almost certainly lead him right to them, and they in turn would lead him to her. According to Warren, the girls had been twins, a rarity in a place like the Seat, and such a thing would not go unnoticed with such tight controls on child-rearing. This piece of information was the break that Ortis had been waiting for. He left Warren to numb himself with drink, and proceeded to consider his next step.
His first thought was to go to the recording office, where the Empire stored all of its records like censuses and children’s names and birth dates. However, that was something that only the old Ortis could have accomplished. Getting inside while the Emperor was no doubt looking for him, and had likely named him a traitor, was going to be complicated to say the least. Ortis was convinced that, with the right strategy, he could pull off such a daring feat. But the new Ortis knew of a better way. He had other connections.
He had gone straight to the brothel district, and after asking a number of the brothel owners where he might acquire a more “exotic” selection than they themselves could offer, he had a name: Kenrick.
The man had earned a reputation, even among the deviants who owned many of the establishments in the brothel district, for being notoriously callus about his chosen trade. Ortis would need to exercise caution when he went to meet the man.
Fortunately for Ortis, such flesh trading was not uncommon, and the man was not hard to find, and within four prayers, Ortis was waiting for the man to meet him in a longabandoned alley in the outskirts of the Seat, his arms folded behind his back. Kenrick arrived with three bodyguards, ranging from twenty sojourns to their mid-thirties. Ortis tried his best to slouch and look non-threatening, as the three men fanned out to surround him for this talk with their master.
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 27