Saint Alithiad walked forward. Closer to Heden and now in the light, Heden could make out his form. He looked like a withered man in rags, but his skin was brown and peeling. It looked exactly like dead leaves. Black eyes stared out at Heden. When the creature blinked, the eyes flashed a sickening green color, like mucus. Some kind of membrane retreating slower than the eyelid.
He looked at Heden.
"You're older," he said.
"Sure," Heden said.
"I can see it," the vampire said. "You're losing elasticity in your skin and your hair is losing its pigment."
"Uh-huh," Heden said.
"Doesn’t happen to the elves or dwarves,” the vampire saint said.
“Or the deathless,” Heden said, raising one eyebrow.
“I am not deathless,” Saint Alithiad said with a smirk. Bits of dead skin or leaf or whatever flaked off his face and spiraled gently to the ground.
“No,” Heden said, biting a lip, thinking. “I thought you were once, but I know better now. That’s why you’re still here after Aendrim. You’re not a Man are you? You never were.”
“I am from another world,” the vampire said, and stretched his arms. Long sticks like poorly carved wood covered in moss and then desiccated.
“The World Below?” Heden asked.
A sigh slowly slipped from the thing before him. The room seemed to get colder.
“You have the blade,” Alithiad whispered.
“Not a good idea to come down here without it,” Heden said. Solaris had been key in defeating the Saint of Worms, all those years ago.
“How long have I been in here?” the saint asked. Heden concluded this creature was not from the World Below, might not even know what it was.
“Seven years,” Heden said.
“Mmmm,” the saint said. “That figure doesn’t mean much to me.”
“I need to know something,” Heden said.
The old man made of dead leaves tilted his head
“Why should I help you?” he asked.
“Because we didn’t kill you when we had the chance,” Heden said.
“Mmm,” the saint said. “That’s true. Still, not much motivation.”
“Because you’re bored and have nothing else to do,” Heden offered.
“Also true. Time doesn’t pass for me the way it does for you, though. Ask your question.”
“Is there a new power in the city?”
The vampire made a hollow noise Heden chose to interpret as a laugh. “In the city?” he said. “The city. Heh. How can you be so blind? How can you walk around with that thing,” it said, nodding at Solaris, “and not feel it? How did you find me, if you can’t sense it?”
“Hard work,” Heden said. “And I had help. You weren’t making it hard to follow you.”
“Mmm no. I got careless. You found my temple. Did you marvel at what you saw? At what I had done to the young boys, the animals? What I turned them in to?”
“No, I think I threw up then.” The feeling of nausea wasn’t far away at the moment, either.
“Strange reaction. Regurgitating a meal. Body reacting to the perception of poisons, toxins. The perception,” the black saint said, “not the reality. How fragile the mirror of the world you build in your mind, that an image can have the effect of a poison on you.”
“It’s because we’re fragile that we’re so tough,” Heden said.
The saint nodded.
“The elves call that loiil,” he said. “Truth arising from a logical contradiction.”
“I like that,” Heden said.
“I thought you would.” A moment passed. Heden waited. “Why should I answer you?” Saint Alithiad asked.
“You already answered me,” Heden said. “You forgot, you said, that I’m mortal and can’t sense it myself. That means there’s something there to sense.”
The saint smiled.
“I wondered if you were paying attention. Lynwen chose well.”
“That’s a compliment,” Heden said.
“And why not? We are not enemies,” the vampire seemed affronted.
“No,” Heden said. “I know that, now, too. You’re something else. You wore the skin of a Man because you were bored. You gave yourself to Nikros because it helped you hide. But this, all this,” Heden said gesturing to the cell, but meaning the city, “it really is beneath you. You don’t hate us, you’re just curious. I don’t think it occurred to you that we could feel pain. Dread. Fear.”
“You are more than I’d guessed,” the Saint said. “But only a little more. I didn’t think you could master me, even with that,” he said, indicating Solaris.
“So what happens to you now that you know what we can do?”
The vampire shrugged. “I’ll forget. I’ll wait this out. A few hundred cycles, a few thousand. It doesn’t matter. Maybe I’ll be trapped down here, it won’t be the first time. Eventually another civilization will dig me out and I’ll be free again. Hopefully I’ll remember what you can do next time. Probably I’ll be a feral mindless thing and have to start all over.”
“How long has this new power been here?” Heden asked. “How close is it?”
“Time is difficult for me,” the Saint of Worms said. “Distance, too. This hive of yours, it’s large for creatures like you?”
“The city, you mean. Celkirk”
Saint Alithiad sighed. He hated when Heden couldn’t keep up.
“There are many powers here, especially after the other hive collapsed.”
“Exeder.” The capital city of Aendrim.
“The new power, a celestial perhaps.” Heden congratulated himself at getting the information out of the Black Saint without giving anything up. But the Saint of Worms wasn’t done. “And at least one power greater than me, but slumbering. I tried to wake it but reconsidered when I heard a whisper of its name.”
“A dragon,” Heden concluded. “Here? You’re trying to distract me.”
“Is it working?” An eyebrow arched in curiosity.
“A little,” Heden admitted. There was a dragon in the city?
The saint appeared to be breathing quickly. Heden frowned.
"You should leave," Alithiad said, turning and shuffling to his cot.
"Why?" Heden asked, worried.
"I can get through the bars," the vampire said casually, almost like he was exhausted. "They don't know it, but I can. It's easy. I don't have to keep this form. Please leave. I can smell it in you." Saint Alithiad sat down.
"What are you talking about?" Heden's curiosity for such things was getting the better of him. But you never knew when you were going to learn something critical to fighting whatever this creature was. Such curiosity was useless for a priest, but necessary for a ratcatcher.
"It's a...," Saint Alithiad chose his words carefully, "substance your body produces. I can smell it. In your brain. It gives my people life. Leave. Please leave. I’d like to be alone for another hundred cycles at least."
Heden backed up, turned and strode to the inner door.
Closing it behind him, he pulled on the cord in the antechamber, thinking on what Saint Alithiad had said, what had just happened. Why would the Dark Veil spare Heden, if he could kill him? His motivations were opaque.
After a few moments, the guard let him out. Stifling the urge to panic, the danger over but not forgotten, Heden raced out of the citadel. Neglecting to inform the guard of what the Saint of Worms had told him.
Chapter Fifty-seven
It was late and the girls asleep. There were only a few hours of night between their closing up and the start of business the next morning. It felt strange, to have the entire common room, the ground floor to himself.
He put Solaris on the bar and began arranging the chairs for the next day’s business. He enjoyed helping the girls. Feeling useful doing something simple.
He lost track of time. Then he realized the room around him, behind him, was unnaturally quiet. He turned around.
Aimsley Pinwhist
le stood on the other side of the room. Several tables between them. Solaris on the bar behind him.
“You’re going after the girl,” the polder said. He was braced like he had a weapon in both hands, but they were empty. Heden knew this didn’t matter. When he needed then, the twin dirks would be there.
The polder’s face was red with controlled fury. He was coiled like a spring and in Heden’s eyes he seemed infused by drink. It was part of who he was. Whatever it did for him, he needed it. Whatever he needed to forget, whoever he needed to be, someone who did things that needed forgetting, the drink gave it to him. Let him be that person. Freed him from the pain and guilt while allowing him to accumulate more of it.
It was killing him. With Vanora in jeopardy, Heden's moral sense was heightened and he saw inside the master-thief. Didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before. The drink was killing him and at the same time it was the only way he ever felt alive. There was no in-between here. There was no line to walk for the thief. No choice. Only a certain spiral of destruction.
Heden needed him. Needed him and needed to help him. Needed him to stop the count and needed to help him to banish the vision of Sir Taethan that lay behind his eyelids.
A month ago, a year ago, Heden wouldn’t have known what to do. It would have been an unanswerable riddle. But that man died in the mud outside a distant priory. The man who stood in the inn, the man who was going to save Vanora, knew exactly what he had to do. What he should have done for Taethan. What he could have done for Taethan.
“Yeah,” Heden said, answering the thief's question.
The polder gritted his teeth and shook his head once. “Don’t.”
“You could stop me,” Heden said. He looked down at the floor and with his boot, kicked idly at a bit of food ground into the floor. He wasn’t going to stare down the polder.
“Yes,” the thief said.
“But you’d have to kill me.”
“I know that!” the polder was furious. At who? Heden didn’t know, but he knew. He was furious at the Brick for sending him here. Furious at Heden for being someone who had to be killed, and furious at himself for coming.
Heden looked at the little man. It wasn’t pity he gave the polder, it was understanding. Not only an understanding of the creature before him, but of the future and what was about to happen.
“Brick sent you here to stop me.”
“Brick sent me here to kill you, you shit.”
Heden nodded. In this state, like this, the polder was unpredictable.
“If you have to do it,” Heden said with a shrug, “you have to do it. Nice of you to talk to me first though.”
The thief looked like Heden had slapped him. Heden’s acceptance just wound everything inside the polder up.
“You piece of shit,” the thief accused. "You don't get it, do you? You think you've got everyone figured out."
Heden stared at him blankly. What was he talking about?
The thief took a deep breath.
"I killed the abbot,” Aimsley said.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Heden stood there, uncomprehending. The thief had done what five black scarves could not, he had stopped Heden dead in his tracks.
“You…," he said, blinking. Trying to absorb the information.
“You didn’t know that, did you?" the thief barked. "You think you’ve got everyone figured out, but you couldn’t see it.”
“You killed him,” Heden repeated.
“What did you think the Brick would do?!” Aimsley shouted, his face red, the veins and tendons on his neck standing out.
"You killed the abbot. You killed...and then you took Vanora to the count."
“You know the count has him over a barrel and you know he’s got his horn up for her and you knew they’d send me to find her!”
"You killed him," Heden repeated, and a bowel-freezing calm came over him. "And now you've killed Vanora. You took her to the count, and now he has her. And if she's not dead already...."
"I told you the girl wasn't worth it. I told you this would happen!" The polder was raging, furious, barely able to control himself.
"And now you've come to kill me." Heden felt detached from his body. As though he were watching a scene play out from the audience.
"I told him I wanted out!" Aimsley said. He was sick of the killing, Heden could see it in him, but it was all there was inside. He was made of it. "He said this is the price! The priest who fucked everything up in the first place."
Heden’s mind spun. He made a moral leap.
“You could get her back,” he said.
“What!?” the thief squeaked.
“You could do it," Heden urged. "You could find her where I can’t. You could find her, get her out and no one would know it was you!” He spoke the ideas as they came to his mind.
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
Heden pointed at him. “Because it’s the right thing to do!” he leveled this at the thief like a prayer of commanding. He was trying to will the thief into action through sheer weight of moral authority. The thief reeled in response. It almost worked.
Breathing fast for no reason, the thief steadied himself. “You’re living in a fucking fairy story!” he said.
Heden realized he was also breathing rapidly. Senses heightened. It would be difficult, beating the polder without killing him…or dying in the process. But the prospect of saving someone, anyone, this thief who needed saving more than anyone he’d met, made the attempt worthwhile.
“I won’t kill you,” Heden said calmly. Anger had fled. Only readiness now.
“You’ll wish you had,” the polder said.
“I doubt it,” Heden said, deliberately provoking the little man. “There’s nothing left inside you but the drink.”
That was enough. The thief ignited with rage. From Heden’s point of view, it looked like the drink took him over in that moment.
The shadow-magics master thieves practiced produced only short bursts of advantage, and took their toll, draining those who used them. Aimsley disappeared, and in a blink was six feet closer, on a table, as though he had leapt there through empty space. Another blink and he was above Heden, in the air, the two long, thin razor-tipped dirks in his hands ready to plunge down into Heden’s shoulder and neck, severing vital arteries.
Heden buckled his left leg, allowing gravity to pull him down, roll away out and under the polder’s attack. As the polder sailed over him, inches from where he had been standing, he felt one of the dirks sink into his back.
Heden’s right side clenched with pain, but he couldn’t allow himself to panic. Only then did he lose.
The polder landed and rolled away, knowing that even without Solaris or his breastplate, if Heden got his hands on him, things could be over quickly.
That first cut was deep. He forced himself to straighten and turn to face the thief. One of his legs buckled and he tried to brace himself on a table, which upended at the imbalance.
Aimsley leaped forward and everything moved in slow motion. A dozen prayers flew into Heden’s mind. It was getting easier to sort them all out now, purely a tactical exercise. But he forbid himself. He was going to save the thief. Either he was going to save him, or they would both die here on the floor of the inn.
As the thief danced past him, a dirk slipped between his ribs, and he let it. The prayer that would turn his skin to stone, unspoken.
Dull aches in his gut and back told him something important, some organs, had been damaged badly. He spun and feinted and the thief leaped to stab thinking Heden was stumbling. Heden took the advantage and put everything he had into the punch he knew he could land.
Heden was not a big man, but he was all muscle and he knew how to hit. The punch cracked the thief’s jaw and sent him spinning.
Before the thief had even hit the floor, there was poison on his blades. Where it had come from, Heden couldn’t see. Some secret pocket. That the thief could find and apply the poison while in the air,
in the same instant his jaw was dislocated, meant he was better than any thief Heden had ever fought or campaigned with.
Aimsley Pinwhistle landed on his feet, catching himself before almost falling over, and threw a red-eyed baleful look at the priest. This is it, Heden thought.
The thief sprang into the air, his twin dirks poised to plunge into Heden’s heart and there was no way Heden could move fast enough.
“Noxa,” Heden said. Not a prayer, a curse. One of the most powerful he knew, and Cavall gave it to him.
Three feet in the air and halfway to Heden, the thief suddenly plunged straight to the ground. Like a rock dropping from the sky. He smashed into the wood as though he were heavier than a cask of ale. His dirks scattered across the floor.
Pinned there under some incredible weight, the polder managed to push himself up, the muscles in his arms and shoulder straining to the breaking point. All he managed to do, however, was flip himself onto his back before collapsing again. Gasping like the inn was resting on top of him.
Heden walked over to him. The pain forgotten. He was bleeding all down his trousers from where the thief had stabbed him. It didn’t matter.
The thief’s eyes spun wildly. He could barely move his head. He strained for any advantage, any clue of what was going on. He couldn’t breathe.
“Is a curse the weight of every evil deed you’ve ever done?” Heden asked, his voice coming from somewhere Aimsley couldn't see, couldn't move his head to look. The air was being crushed from his lungs, his face was bright red, his teeth bared with effort and hatred. He would kill this priest. If only he could find him, get close enough. Where was he?
“Or is it guilt? I don’t know. I’ve never known. Cavall knows.”
Heden stepped into his field of view and looked down at him.
“You know.”
As Aimsley struggled just to breathe, gasps exploding out of him, Heden walked over to the upturned table, righted it, and began taking off his shirt.
“You have no idea what I can do,” he said. Aimsley fought again to push himself up, but couldn’t move his arms. He couldn’t get any air. He was going to die like this.
“You killed a man I loved. I betrayed everyone I cared about and everything we worked for,” Heden said without feeling. He pulled the buttons from their loops at the neck of his linen shirt, and pulled it over his head, exposing his chest and arms, pale and scarred. Whips of black hair covered his chest. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him.
Thief: A Fantasy Hardboiled (Ratcatchers Book 2) Page 25