Not sex, that smell, but something earthier and more subtle. A smoky smell, a sour perspiration: drugs. The sort of drugs Kolan and many other victims had been fed to keep them docile. She’d tasted it on their breath, as they writhed in her grip; licked it up with their sweat, their tears, their blood.
The drugs had names. She remembered a few of them: Aesa. Esthit. Dasta. The aesa had rendered victims slow of mind and prone to laughter. She’d liked that. The esthit had made it easier to reach inside their minds and take anything she wanted; Rosin had asked her to do that often. And the dasta... That had made them willing to do things they would never have considered, sober.
A moment’s focus pulled the information from the girl’s mind: the men were going into a hopam, which translated, more or less, to “dream-house”; which translated further, to these stupid humans, as a place to take illegal drugs.
She’d thought all those drugs Rosin had employed were only ever used as instruments of torture. But these humans were paying for the chance to haze their minds and distort their physical reactions. These ordinary, free, untouched humans thought it was pleasant.
They had no idea how vulnerable the drugs made them. Had no idea what was watching them from the shadows, and how easily they could die—or worse—this night.
Their stupidity was sickening.
Rage rose, out of control in a heartbeat.
The flower girl turned, too late, her eyes widening: flung up a hand in belated protest and whined at the pain of the first blow, like a pitiable child. She was young—so young! Barely older than Ellemoa’s son would be—had the girl known him? Ellemoa knelt beside the nearly unconcious girl and reached without hesitation to sort through memory. The girl’s whine turned into a bubbling shriek: Ellemoa crushed her vocal cords with an irritable gesture and kept searching.
The girl’s mind was hazed with a lifetime of fear and pain and despair, her recall blunted by the many drugs she herself had taken over the years. If she had seen Ellemoa’s son, it didn’t stand out among the blurred and greyed threads of a useless life.
One memory came through: My son. I lost my son. She’d had a child herself, a son—and something had happened: a moment of carelessness, or unluck, or black fate. It didn’t come clear whether the drug use had been part of the moment. It didn’t matter. She was a mother. She’d lost her son.
Just like me.
But the girl was dying, bubbling breath by bubbling breath: Ellemoa couldn’t reverse the damage done. Not, on consideration, that she particularly wanted to. Having a son didn’t make one exempt from consequence: the girl had chosen to walk into a trade that caused irreparable stupidity among humankind. She’d chosen to use the drugs herself, to block out memory and absolve herself of responsibility for the death of her child.
Not like me at all. I won’t ever forget, Ellemoa thought as she absently tucked the girl’s body into a more compact bundle and covered it with a cloak to hide it from casual passerby. I won’t hide from the responsibility of taking care of my son. I won’t make that mistake.
As she stood to leave, she saw the basket of flowers, dropped and tilted on its side in the wake of her initial attack. Something about the innocent white of the blooms set her fury raging again: it was so wrong, to use such beauty for such evil. The dappling of red across the white only highlighted the wrongness. She grabbed the basket and smashed it to bits. Puffy white blossoms rolled and tumbled in a wide arc across the dirty cobblestones.
Someone shouted, a distance away; Ellemoa faded into shadow and night instantly, without waiting to see if the shout had been aimed at her.
I won’t forget, she thought as she eased clear of the area. I’ll never forget. I have to save my son. He deserves so much better than this. He deserves real beauty, not the evil falsehoods humans pass off as truth. He will get what he deserves.
I’ll make sure of that.
Chapter Seventeen
Architecturally, Bright Bay could be divided into distinct sections: the southwestern buildings were heavy block, thick-walled and wide-windowed, inviting in the sea breezes swirling from the west and south. On the eastern side, especially the southeastern, buildings had thinner walls—often wood—and fewer windows, nearly always on the west face of the building in a hopeless effort to avoid the swamp-muck stench that permeated the far eastern edge of town. The streets tended more towards mud, sand, and shell fragments than the bricks and cobblestones of the western sections.
A thin, misty drizzle began as Tank crunched along the shellrock road into the southeastern market square. The booths stood empty for the most part, whether from the earlier drenching downpour or some local holiday he wasn’t sure. A scattering of stubborn holdouts huddled under colorful cloth tents, their wares raised high on sturdy benches and tables, themselves seated on stools or standing on sandy piles of shellrock that barely crested the mud in some instances.
He paused, squinting through the drizzle, trying to remember the layout; glanced around at the surrounding buildings for reference points, and finally squish-gritted over to one of the occupied booths. A lean man with murky, lank brown hair watched Tank’s approach with barely masked wariness.
“Bread today, s’e?” he inquired as Tank stopped in front of his table. His gaze flickered to the hilt of the sword over Tank’s shoulder. “Fresh rolls, baked this morning.” He drew back the corner of a thick cloth to show seven roughly circular lumps of bread beneath. “Best in the city.” He didn’t sound particularly convinced, himself.
Tank cleared his throat. “Was there... a woman, not long ago? Running this table? An older woman. A little on the stout side.”
The man’s face went cold as the drizzling rain. “My mother,” he said. “Gone.”
Tank didn’t ask how; the vendor’s expression said it all.
“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I wanted to thank her. She was kind to me, once, and it meant a lot. I wanted to pay her back.” He fumbled in his belt pouch and withdrew a half-silver piece, his hand shaking.
The vendor shook his head and waved the coin away. “That’s what got her gone,” he said, bitterness pervading his tone. “Kindness. She got gutted for helping some damn fool hide from the guards. Two days before Ninnic went out. Two days.”
Even though Tank knew it hadn’t been his fault—she hadn’t helped him hide, only given him a piece of bread—sour guilt over the timing raked through his stomach. Two days. Maybe scant hours after he’d seen her.
He wondered who she’d given her life to help: street thief or escaping nobleman.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”
The vendor drew the cloth back over the bread and regarded Tank with a flat, unforgiving stare.
Tank laid the silver half-round down on the table and retreated. The man made no move to pick it up. His glare burned along the back of Tank’s neck the whole way out of the market.
“Ssss,” someone said as Tank cleared the perimeter of the market. He looked to his right and found the street-rat he’d met earlier in the day watching him. Her hair, slick with moisture, might have been a dark blonde or a light brown; the drizzle cut muddy trails through her skin.
“Ssss,” he said back, a little wearily. “What now?”
She stared at him for another moment, then pointed back into the market. He followed the path of her finger and saw a form huddled beneath one of the tables, so still and grey that he’d walked past without a second glance. Not dead; the shoulders moved in restless sleep.
Tank looked back at the street-rat, frowning, puzzled; but she was gone. Of course. He hesitated, scanning the area for potential ambush, then shook his head and walked a few steps back towards the huddled figure.
Closer, a random branch beside the sleeper clarified into a heavy walking-stick. Tank’s stomach sank in sudden suspicion, and he turned to glare back into the mist.
“Who the hells are you?” he said out loud, suspecting that she’d hear him, and received only silence by
way of an answer.
The sound of his voice roused the figure from sleep. It rolled and shoved upright, very nearly catching its head against the underside of the table. The rough blanket fell away to reveal a face once broad and strong, now pinched and pale; the boy stared at Tank for a long moment without recognition.
Tank backed up a step. Sorry choked in his throat this time, for multiple reasons.
“You,” the boy said at last. “You.” The word was a curse.
“Blackie... .” Tank drew a breath, trying to bring out more words; failed, turned, and fled.
He slowed to a walk after less than a block, breathing hard, but kept his pace rapid, his head bent, his shoulders hunched in a ferociously defensive posture. Nobody stopped him. People moved well clear of him, allowing him the straight-line path.
After another block he stopped, glaring at the ground. A splash of pale color caught his eye: a white rose, wilted and ragged, heavily flecked with brown, lay tucked up against a nearby building. He stared at it for a moment, oddly uneasy, then turned, examining the area with care. A few people hurried by, cloaks drawn tight and hoods up against the rain. Nobody spared him a second glance.
He found his gaze drawn to the building the rose lay against. A recessed doorway, three steps up from the street; shuttered windows; no sign or decoration announcing whether it was a home or a business. The hair rose on the back of his neck, and he looked around again, nostrils flaring as though scent might catch the source of his unease. Only the smell of damp, muddy stone came back to him. He glanced down, realizing for the first time that this particular street boasted actual cobblestones, not dirt and sand. That meant wealth, although every building he could see was starkly plain.
He found himself looking back at the rose, and a shiver ran down his spine.
Intuition said, as in the bar: Get out of here. He resisted this time, turning in place, and focused with more care on the various shades of grey and brown surrounding him. His attention snagged on a patch that wasn’t—quite—right. Squinting a little, he made out a grey heap, much like the sleeper in the market square, tucked up under a stand of drooping featherleaf bushes at one corner of the shuttered building.
He swallowed back prescient nausea and edged forward. Squatting beside the bushes, he could see that the lumps beneath the brownish-grey cloak bore no resemblance to a sleeping human form.
Faint pink rivulets threaded through the puddle of water around the cloak. The tip of a black shoe protruded in one spot. The heel of another, or perhaps the end of a bone, tented the cloak at an impossible angle.
No intact human form, other than that of a child, could have fit beneath the cloak; and the visible shoe was too large for a child.
Tank stood and backed away without bothering to lift the blanket. He swallowed hard, looking around, every sense bristling at full alert: Nothing. Whatever had happened here was over. Whatever had done this was gone.
He yielded to the imperative prod of intuition, all the same, and got the hells out of there without further delay.
Chapter Eighteen
A fine drizzle muted the smells of the caravan yard, but failed to entirely wash them from the air. Kolan didn’t mind. He’d smelled worse, over the years, and at least there was fresh air moving against his face, and rain from the sky, not the dank condensation of the catacombs.
He found the carriages-for-hire paddock and paused by the gate, watching men and horses swear at one another. After a while it occurred to him that he was hearing the men swear at the horses, which was unremarkable, but he was also hearing the horses curse back, which seemed a bit odd. And the men didn’t seem to notice the barrage of irritable complaints: Watch it, there, said an elderly grey mare, turning her head and flicking long ears as a man tightened the straps of her harness. That’s tight enough, you hoofless gelding!
The man paid no heed, yanking the strap another notch in with a grunt. The grey mare stepped back and sideways and kicked, all at once; straps broke and tangled into a hopeless mess. Then the mare stood still, placid once more, her tail twitching in what Kolan read as vivid amusement.
Fix that, you lice-ridden worm, she snorted.
“Stupid whorebag rackrib,” the man swore, picking himself up, and swatted the mare on the rump. She turned her head and stared at him with large, mild eyes, to all appearances unmoved; but Kolan heard her laughing.
The mare lifted her head and looked directly at Kolan then, and her eyelids slid down in a slow blink. No—a horse wink.
This is the only outgoing carriage today, she said, one ear swiveling. The others are already reserved or gone. You’ll have to wait a bit, until they find a driver with sense. I’m too old to put up with fools.
“I see,” Kolan murmured. “Well, thank you.” He bowed, prompting a strange look from a few people and a tail-twitch burst of laughter from the mare.
Perhaps he could get a ride with one of the caravans, instead. He wandered through the rows of paddocks for the rich merchants and the picket lines of the less-wealthy, looking for someone who felt honest, or at least reasonably reliable. He paused by one paddock, watching a skinny blond boy arguing with a plump merchant, then went on without calling out: the man radiated a slick green sourness, and the boy was laced with the black lines that led to the place of screaming. Neither one would be safe companions for him. He wondered, idly, how they’d get along on the road.
After an hour of wandering through the caravan yard, he sighed, accepting the inevitable, and asked directions to the northeastern gates of the city.
The marshes between Bright Bay and Kybeach emitted a rotting stench far too similar to that of the catacombs. Kybeach itself was little more than an arc of ill-built houses slouching in sullen heaps, their backs to the marshes as their inhabitants turned away from outsiders.
Kolan stood at the edge of the village, looking it over under the pale light of a dying moon—the Healer’s Moon, he thought, accepting the knowledge as calmly as he had that of hearing a horse speak.
Stranger things were possible. He’d seen them. He’d done a few of them.
But never for Rosin. Never for that monster. I can be proud of that, at least.
Ellemoa broke. I didn’t. Can I be proud of that?
He looked down at his hands, rubbed them together, then walked unhurriedly into the quiet village. The shadows seemed oddly sharp and dark for a waning moon.
“What’s that? What’s that?” someone croaked nearby. A hooded lantern clattered open; light spilled out, washing over Kolan like pale sunshine. An elderly man hobbled forward a step, squinting, sneering. “No time to come in daylight like an honest man, eh?” he demanded.
Kolan stared at him.
The elderly man stared back, uneasy now, then pushed forward a step. “Off with you, beggar,” he snapped, “or I’ll roust the town for a thief-hanging. On through, now, we don’t want your kind here, day or night!”
“I’m not a beggar,” Kolan said mildly. “I’m a priest.”
The elderly man recoiled several steps, his face twisting. “The Northern Church is gone,” he said. “Gone! All above the line of the Hackerwood, now, all but the swamp priests. You’re coming from Bright Bay and expect me to believe you’re a priest? No, no, there are no more priests coming from there. Not anymore.”
Kolan blinked, surprised only that he wasn’t surprised. “All the same,” he said, “I’m a priest. Not a thief. Not a beggar.”
“Ah, well, you’d say that,” the old man said. He moved a step forward, thrusting the lantern ahead of him, studying Kolan’s face with nearly manic intensity.
Something moved nearby; Kolan squinted, trying to see past the glare of the lantern.
“What’s that?” The old man backed up and half-turned, peering at the motion, then made a disgusted sound.
The figure ambled closer, staggering a little every few steps: the sour, sweaty reek of too much hard liquor preceded it. The watchman made the disgusted sound again as a blond man steppe
d into the circle of lantern light. The drunk’s face was as sallow and shadowed as one of the others at the beginning of a fit; Kolan stood very still, watching with care.
“Lashnar, be off to bed!” the watchman said sharply. “All respect, s’e, you’re in no state. Go home to bed!”
The blond man stared at Kolan, ignoring the old watchman entirely.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “You can’t have her. She’s not here anymore. She’s dead. Go away!”
“He’s going,” the watchman said. “He’s going.” He shot Kolan a fierce glare.
Kolan studied the blond man, assessing his temper, then said, “It’s very late, s’es. I’d like to rest. Is there an inn here?”
“No rooms left,” the old man said severely.
The blond man staggered a step sideways. “Outsiders,” he said. “It’s always the damned outsiders that bring the trouble. Well, I’ve nothing left, d’ya hear? Nothing at all! Not even my daughter! All because of you!”
He lunged forward. Kolan stood still; backing up would only make the man more aggressive.
“Lashnar!” the watchman said shrilly, retreating several steps. “Leave off!”
The blond man’s hands closed around Kolan’s neck, but loosely. Nearly nose to nose now, Kolan could read in the man’s face that he’d expected Kolan to fight back and was uncertain how to handle the lack of response.
The touch sparked a wave of other memory; Kolan reflexively shifted the flow over to an outer loop and bled it off into the ground, unwilling to see anything this man had gone through. He couldn’t remember: had Ellemoa taught him that trick, long ago in Arason, or had he picked it up during their captivity?
I wish I’d known I could do this sooner, he thought. But then Rosin would have known, too, so it’s just as well.
Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) Page 13