Her optimism at realizing that there was no manhunt for her or the two girls, and that she might be able to start over, was weighed against the reports of the Emperor Uriel and six hundred of his men riding through the Seat on some unknown purpose of their own. She knew now that it was not about her. She was just some stupid girl who had let her situation give her a swelled head, and of no importance to the Empire. But even with the realization that the Empire cared not a whit for a petty thief like her, she had to admit that their presence complicated matters for her, and she would need to move with caution, avoiding her normal form of travel via the rooftops.
The idea of springing around on rooftops in the midst of six hundred trained Imperial soldiers, rather than among a populace numbed by the monotony and despair of their own pathetic lives, filled her with a certain amount of dread.
But Catelyn decided that whatever was happening within the Seat, she needed to act. She began simply enough, by picking a direction and moving toward it.
In truth, she was somewhat thankful for the chance to be able to climb down to street level and walk for a while, and so she did just that, ensuring that her hair was completely tucked up under her head wrap and walking tenderly from the tight muscles in her legs.
She decided that if anyone could find out what was happening and why the Emperor had ridden into the city with his men, it would be Silena. Catelyn smiled slightly when she realized that if she was being honest with herself, her real reason for making strides towards the central marketplace had less to do with gathering information, and more to do with the fact that she simply missed Silena. And Catelyn also knew that she could confide in the older woman. Maybe Silena could help her decide what to do, and would have an opinion on whether or not she should risk everything to try to get out of the Seat.
Despite her soreness, as Catelyn made her way towards the center of the Seat, she felt a distinct spring in her step, and hummed a little tune quietly to herself.
Chapter 16
Uriel placed his head in his hands, grabbed his temples on both sides and squeezed, trying to shut out the droning melody that had recently returned to his mind. Once again, none of his officers were able to hear the song, and he wondered if he was beyond help. Whatever process had stopped his natural aging sojourns ago, perhaps it did not slow the decay of the mind. He recalled flashes of memory about his grandfather, Uriel the First of His Name, of an old man with paper thin skin babbling incoherently to himself and others as his mind fell away in his dotage, piece by piece. Was that happening to him now as well?
He was standing in a makeshift war room with three of his officers, little more than someone’s former living room, refitted for the purpose of receiving reports from each about their patrols in the hunt for Ortis and the artifact. So far, the eastern quadrant of the city had been thoroughly searched and nothing of consequence had been found. The officers had reported to him about a number of citizens whom they had killed for one petty crime or another, but Uriel had no care for such details. He waved dismissively after each report, and each time, he could see the men sweating over their failure to find their main objective.
For the first time in his life, Uriel was not concerned about such failure. In uncharacteristic fashion, he found that he had all the patience in the world to capture Ortis. And he would capture Ortis, of that he had absolutely no doubt. There was little use in reprimanding his men at this point, when they had only just begun their search a few days ago, and so much of the city yet remained to be searched. A quarter of his men he had assigned to create a perimeter around the city, with checkpoints beyond which none could enter or leave without being detained and questioned, ensuring that no one could escape the Seat without his knowledge.
No, what concerned Uriel was not the length of the search for his former commander, his former lover, his former friend. He had every confidence that would end on his terms, and it would end soon enough. What concerned Uriel was this echoing melody rattling around in his head, seemingly at random.
Uriel was convinced now that it was not simply a product of his own mind. He had always known that he was different from the other men of power he had watched and learned from as a boy growing up in his father’s Empire. He knew that where other men faltered in their own softness, their own weakness driving them to act upon such antiquated notions like morality, he was cold and refined like a precious metal. But this clarity of purpose was not the product of a damaged mind, he knew.
It was a sign that he was superior. That he was the man destined to lead the human species to a new plateau. To a place beyond morality, beyond weakness. His vision for his people was impossible for others to understand sometimes. Only a handful had seen the brilliance of it. Ortis had been one of them, or so he had once thought but as he had aged, he could see Ortis’ faith in their cause dwindle and then flicker out, like a candle that had burned down its wick until nothing remained.
Ironically enough Ortis, at least as he had been in their youths, would have believed Uriel about the haunting melody, and he would have helped him hunt down the answer. But Uriel was alone now and he would need to find the answer to this mystery on his own.
If it wasn’t his own mind making the song, then something else must be. Something only he could hear...something… Uriel looked up at his men, who were silently watching him ruminate, and angrily waved them out of the room. They quickly filed out and left Uriel alone, free of their distraction.
Uriel reached to his belt and took hold of the platinum crook hanging at his belt. As always, the cool feel of the carved figures upon the handle filled him with the sense of his own power and he felt light-headed. As he gripped the crook, raising it so that he could stare at the surface of the handle, he focused his Will into it. And as he did, the song changed. He could hear it now, as clearly as if the singer were right in the room with him , and it echoed off the walls loud enough that he could finally make out details.
It sounded like a young girl, humming.
But how could he hear such a thing? He stared at the crook in his hand, listening to the song and the singer, and a memory came rising to the surface of his mind. A memory of his father, describing the crook that had been in his family for three generations, and had become the symbol of their importance, of their rank, of their place as the chosen shepherds of men.
“My son, one day, when you are ready to lead our Empire, you will hold this in your hands as a symbol to our people that you shall keep them safe, and guide them towards their destiny. Your grandfather was the first to wield this crook as the symbol of our enormous sacrifice and of our eternal vigilance as leaders of our flock, and then he in turn passed that responsibility onto my shoulders. One day I will do the same for you, and on that day, you will feel not just the weight of the metal it was forged of, but of the heavy burden of responsibility which it represents.
“Uriel, it has been said that long ago, this crook was but a single part of an entire set, and the rulers of men in those days used them to assert and retain their rightful places as intellectual leaders, heads of state, or as generals of vast and powerful armies. Our family has sought other pieces of that noble legacy, for it is known that there is power within the metal. Power that we no longer understand.
“You will feel it, when the time is right. This is our legacy, and one day, you will claim it as your own.”
Uriel had, of course, ripped that legacy from his foolish father’s hands. His father had the correct vision, but not the stomach for what needed to be done to attain the grandeur of that vision. That had been his downfall. He could still remember the look of shock and sadness on his father’s face as he had watched his life spill out onto the floor slowly, Uriel’s sword protruding from the back of his father’s neck.
But his father had been right about the crook. As soon as he had taken hold of it, it had changed him. In truth, he had actually taken possession of it, or rather it had called out to him, two sojourns before he had enacted the coup that had secur
ed the Empire in his name.
His father wore the thing ceremonially, but he just as often hung the crook in an alcove in the Imperial Citadel, for everyone to gaze upon the mark of his authority. As a boy, Uriel had taken to sneaking out when he was supposed to be asleep, and taken the crook from its holder, wielding it while fantasizing about commanding an army of his own.
And upon seizing the weapon in his small hands, Uriel had known what his father had tried to tell him. He could sense the power in his hands, could feel it respond to him. It wasn’t magic, like in the stories that his nursemaid had sometimes told him at bedtime, of silly superstitions and mythical creatures. This was real, and it filled him with something he had never felt before. When Uriel had tried to describe it to Ortis, he had called it his Will, for when he took hold of the crook, it felt as though it was hearing his needs, and amplifying his own desire to rule. Ortis had never understood, not truly, what that meant because even Uriel couldn’t completely explain the power he felt when he held it in his hands.
And now that one of the other artifacts had been found, and the song which haunted him seemed to sing to him even stronger when he held his own artifact, he concluded the obvious possibility glaring at him. Could it be that the two of them were linked somehow? It seemed improbable and illogical, and yet, how else could he explain the evidence of his own senses?
A chill ran up and down his spine. He considered the insanity of this idea, but then calmly, he realized what this had to mean.
Ortis doesn’t have the artifact, he thought.
Uriel ran to the entry of the room he stood in, and slammed a fist into the wall as he called down to his officers.
“Return to me at once! We’re looking for the wrong person!”
Ortis had eliminated three of the potential men and women from his list of vendors who had both the means and the opportunity to broker a sale the magnitude of something like the artifact. He hadn’t actually eliminated them, as he would likely have done prior to encountering his thief, but simply crossed them off of his list. Something in him could no longer go there, could no longer treat people as things to be discarded once they had served their purpose. This was just one of many things that Ortis could no longer reconcile.
He reasoned that he was already damned many times over for his crimes, and he wished to no longer add to that tally, despite a distant part of his persona which tried to convince him that it no longer mattered. But he swore that this part of him would never rule his mind again.
He didn’t know how he could know such a thing, only having glimpsed her briefly, but he had come to believe that his thief would not approve of such action, either. He felt it in his bones, in much the same way that he had felt exactly the opposite with Uriel.
He didn’t try to understand it. He simply accepted it. The next name on his list was a woman named Silena. She operated a stall in the central marketplace, selling various antiquities and relics of the past. The Empire reportedly often bought from her, and so he would need to be careful in how he approached her, as she was likely at least somewhat sympathetic to the Imperial cause and might very well be one of their many eyes and ears. He doubted that she would recognize him immediately through his disguise, but if he asked the wrong questions or gave away too much, she might be able to determine who he was and that he was now wanted by the Emperor himself.
He watched her from afar for a while, sizing her up. She was older, with pale skin and a short, stocky build. She wore a faded red kerchief over her bald head, the color just bold enough to be questionable, and standard grey and beige long skirt and a shawl draped around her shoulders. She was an eccentric one, he could tell. She moved around her stall, talking to herself animatedly while customers pawed at her merchandise in silence, likely trying to make a convincing enough sales pitch to make an item or two disappear before midday.
One thing stuck Ortis immediately, even at a distance. The woman was happy. Genuinely, unbelievably, happy. Such a feeling stuck out to him, like a raging fire in the dark of night. He didn’t quite know why, but Ortis began to feel that his search was over.
Catelyn scouted the central marketplace with her bubble. It was just before midday, and the market stalls were moderately crowded with people from all over the Seat, buying and selling basic necessities. The smells of various food vendors mingled in her nostrils, some causing her mouth to water, others making her wonder what exactly the cook was trying to sell. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and although she sensed some Imperial soldiers wandering among the crowd, they didn’t seem to be doing anything other than loitering, engaged in conversations of their own and probably keeping an eye open for pickpockets and thieves looking to steal from one of the vendors.
She could sense Silena where she always was in the marketplace, in the northwest corner of the central plaza, and the sound of her voice as she talked to the handful of potential buyers at her stall filled Catelyn’s heart with satisfaction. She realized in that moment just how much she’d missed hearing the woman’s friendly voice.
She was halfway to Silena’s stall when her feet were stopped by something plucking at the edges of her bubble. She froze, expanding it to all sides and trying to determine what it was that had caused her to instinctively stop short. She searched the people around her, but nothing seemed unusual. Her heart was thumping hard in her chest, though. Something had sent her an unconscious warning, but she could not determine its source. After a few breaths of thorough scanning with her senses, and calming herself, she resumed walking over to Silena’s stall, but kept her bubble trained around her in case something else triggered another warning.
Silena recognized her when she was still paces away, and she could sense the woman’s energy and her mood change immediately. She didn’t let on that she had spotted Catelyn, or call out to her, but instead continued talking to herself, advertising the various wares she was hoping to sell. Catelyn, however, could smell her intense satisfaction as she approached the stall.
Ortis watched, breathless, as a figure stepped into view while he continued to watch the merchant Silena’s stall. The new figure was wearing light grey shirt and pants and small, wrapped in a scarf that covered over most of their head, including their eyes and mouth, and was carrying a dirty and ragged pack stuffed to the breaking point. The market was busy at this time of day, and a number of other market buyers and stalls obscured his view enough to be unable to tell if the newcomer was male or female, or if they were wearing shoes or not, and Ortis almost felt himself overwhelmed with panic as he tried to reposition himself to get a better look at this stranger.
The person froze in their tracks, and he did as well, putting a tall clothing stall between them and using it to peer around the edge of the wooden enclosure. They turned their head back and forth, tilting it slightly as though listening for something. Then, they seemed to have determined that they were safe, and proceeded to walk again towards the stall where the woman Silena was hawking her merchandise.
Ortis watched as Silena recognized the new arrival, and saw the woman become instantly more enthused about this new visitor. She had been happy before, but now the woman in the stall was downright excited and Ortis felt his own excitement building.
He crept forward slowly, towards the stall where Silena and the new customer were, always keeping a stall between himself and the two of them. The moment he had been searching for was almost upon him, he was sure of it. His heart hammered in his chest, and he began to think about what he wanted, what he would say, what he would do. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. All he felt was the overwhelming desire to see his thief again. He tried to prepare himself for the disappointment if he was wrong, but something in him told him that he had never been more right about anything in his life.
His search was miraculously over. Silena had been about ready to throw in the towel and pack it in for the day, when suddenly the midday lunch rush had come in, and she’d made two sales in seemingly as many breaths. Just a few more an
d she would be able to pack up early and get home to help Erich take care of the girls, and that development had put her in a particularly good mood.
She had been feeling quite good about this new turnaround in her day, and then as she bent across her stall to adjust one of the items at the front of her featured wares, she spotted a very familiar pair of dusty bare feet, making their way lightly towards her stall. She raised her gaze, following the feet up to the small frame and unmistakable head scarf of her friend, Catelyn.
Silena felt her heart swell in joy to recognize the girl, but she was better served to save her feelings for later, when the two of them could meet more privately. And so she simply went right back to selling to the handful of potential buyers at her stall, but she knew that her voice and her demeanor would be obvious to anyone around her. She realized that she didn’t particularly care, and she watched with great excitement as Catelyn strode right up to her stall, the girl pulled her head scarf down to reveal her nose and mouth and said “Hello, Silena”.
Silena reached out, clasped Catelyn’s hand in hers and forgot all about her work in that single, joyous moment of human contact. Her friend had returned.
Catelyn felt Silena’s warm, rough and weathered hands and her heart swelled up in her chest. She felt like crying, like reaching out to embrace this woman who had shared herself so honestly with Catelyn. It had been so long since she had been held, and she had to fight the impulse to fulfill that urge.
“It’s so good to see you, dear,” Silena said genuinely. The two women spent a moment in silence. Silena, to her credit, asked no questions, allowing Catelyn her space. Catelyn however, had dozens of questions, and she started with the most important.
Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) Page 30