It was his last before Nenzi got him down on the packed dirt.
He is about to make the turn that leads to a livestock trail that winds its way through the trees to his home––when he feels them.
He realizes too late that they’ve been waiting for him.
They’ve also surrounded him.
He glances around at the dark forms, reading them swiftly with his light. They are partly shielded, so he doesn’t get all of it, but he gets enough to understand. He does not want to understand, though, and stares around at them again, feeling a kind of clutching pain in his chest as it sinks in, a near disbelief.
“Hullo there,” the first one says, stepping directly into his path.
Nenzi scans his options. He cannot use his sight. He might not be able to push so many without witnesses anyway, but that’s not the real reason.
They have a seer with them.
She told them to bring a seer. She told them what he is.
His breath comes shorter, even as he looks around, counting, taking in sizes and faces and the way they move. Using the telekinesis is out of the question. Not only is he forbidden to use it against his own kind, there is some chance it would be seen behind the Barrier, and the girl would know he had done it.
And there are many of them, he realizes––many more than he first noticed when he realized they had him trapped. The seer obscured their numbers before they had him surrounded; he now counts at least eleven forms standing around the small clearing, none of them small.
“What have I done?” he asks in German. “Please, tell me. I have not wronged you.”
The one who first spoke smiles, moving closer.
“That’s not how we heard it,” he says.
Nenzi digs a hand into his pocket, pulling out the bills half-sweated together inside his pants. He holds them out, keeping his voice steady.
“Is this what you want?” he says, knowing it is not. “Take it. It is yours.”
“Keep your money, iceblood,” another says, his voice thick, some of it from drink. “You’re going to need it to pay the doctor when we’re done.”
He falls instinctively into a fighting stance. Looking around him, though, he knows some of these men. Some he’s even faced in dirt rings in different parts of the city.
They know who he is. They came expecting a fight.
He doesn’t need to beat them. He needs only to get away.
He calls his uncle, a sharp, quick blast from the lower levels of his light, mimicking a call from any ordinary seer.
The seer with them blocks it easily.
Picking out the one he knows to be a mediocre fighter at best, he slides around behind him, trying to force the human between himself and their leader.
But he has stood there too long. He let them get too close to him.
Three of them dart up from behind, force him to turn. He catches one in a cross after dodging a hit from the larger of the two. Weaving under and around another series of thrown punches, he manages to drive two of them back with hits to the temple, but he is not fast enough, he can feel it.
Twisting to get the largest of the four with an elbow to the face, he misses a block to a hit from the other side, and staggers a little from the blow. Again he slides his body sideways, tries to get someone between himself and the others, but he is too slow––his body too tired.
Adrenaline has him forcing another off him with a sharp side kick to the ribs, but he feels his own desperation now. He connects, knocking a man backwards, but he kicks too high. Again, it slows his reactions, and one of the men behind him hooks his arm, round-housing a punch to the side of his head.
It’s a solid hit, and it dazes him––enough to make him pause before twisting his weight to free his arm. When they catch hold of him again, he head-butts the man directly in front of him, breaking his nose.
Then someone has his chest in a vise grip.
He wrenches himself backwards, feels a pain in his side and gasps as the knife slides between his ribs.
Two more hits to his face and one to his throat, and they have him on the ground.
He’s made them angry––not from fighting back so much as from getting in too many hits.
Once they’ve knocked him down, they start by taking turns kicking him.
Things get foggy after that.
HE WAKES, GASPING, when someone throws water on him.
Pain eclipses any awareness of where he is, or who is with him. He lets out a cry when someone grabs his arms, hoisting him up.
He barely hears the words from the men under him.
“Another farmer’s wife, Nenz…?” the voice under him smiles.
He hears the teasing tone, but also the hardness underneath. He can’t fight back. He can’t even pretend to be who he normally would. The arms under him are strong, and other than jostling every bruised and cracked bone in his body, they don’t seem to be trying to hurt him.
When they start walking, he grips hold of those arms, letting out another cry.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home, runt,” a second voice answers, to his left. “I’d think you’d want a bed about now. If not a bath and a few stiff drinks.”
He knows the voice. His fingers loosen on the man holding him, and looking down, he realizes he knows him, too.
Kandash. Wreg.
To the other side of him, he sees a seer only a few decades older than him, and another beside him, maybe fifty years older.
Tardek. Raddi.
They are from his uncle. They are from his unit.
His muscles tremble then collapse as emotion washes through him, a relief profound enough to close his throat. They don’t like him, but they won’t hurt him. He almost forgets he’s not supposed to like them, either.
“I thought they had killed me, brothers,” is all he says.
Wreg chuckles from beside him, glancing at the other three.
“From the looks of your face… they tried.”
Kandash grunts a laugh from where he is carrying him, slung over his shoulder.
Nenzi nods, but can’t force himself to speak again, not without emotion.
It is the last thing he remembers before he is out.
HE WAKES, HIS tongue dried to his mouth, his lungs hurting with each breath. His clothes feel stuck to his skin. He is sweating, lying under a thin blanket on a cot across from a larger wooden bed against the far wall.
He knows at once it is not his uncle’s house, and while he knows this place, well enough to recognize the blanket on him, and the heavy wood beams of the ceiling, painted with a blue and white sword and sun, it takes him a moment to place it.
Then it clicks. Barracks. Under the inn with the red door.
He is in one of their rooms.
He has been in this catacomb of rooms before, although perhaps not in this room exactly. He has come to their common space for meetings and trainings with the other seers, for briefings from his uncle, and even religious ceremonies and more social things.
He has always been an outsider here, though.
More than that, he knows the other seers dislike him––those who don’t hate him outright. Most of this is his own doing, of course.
Pushing aside the thought, he focuses back on his body.
His jaw hurts, more than the rest. Wincing as he raises his arm, he touches his mouth gingerly, feeling the swell of a bruise––maybe more than a bruise. It pulls at the skin of his face.
He touches his face and jaw a few more times with his fingers, to get a sense of the breadth of it, and at the same time feels something off in his mouth, a harder, more ragged pain that is muted somehow. It tells him they likely fed him something to dull the pain, maybe the guland he’s seen the seers use when they’ve injured themselves in the field.
“Guland, yes,” a voice says, in heavily-accented German.
When he looks up, he finds himself meeting the dark eyes of Wreg. The muscular seer carries an armload of firewood as he
enters through a door behind Nenzi’s head.
He stacks the wood by the fireplace on the opposite side of the room, the corded muscle of his arms moving and rippling the ink on his skin. He brushes off his hands, looking at him. Nenzi still hasn’t spoken when Wreg gestures at his own mouth, roughly where Nenzi’s injury is.
“They broke four of your teeth,” he says, matter of fact. “We had to pull them.”
Nenzi feels a cold kind of fear, irrational in that what he fears has already passed. He wonders what he looks like, then decides he doesn’t want to know, briefly thankful for the lack of mirrors. The older seer gestures in reassurance.
“The teeth will grow back, Nenz… and they did nothing to your face that will scar permanently. What it looks like now doesn’t matter.”
Nenzi nods, forcing his shoulders to relax, and the other seer smiles.
“Did you forget you are not human, runt? Only the worms are gifted with one set of teeth.” He grins wider. “We are more like the sharks, yes?”
Nenzi fights to speak only to realize he can’t, at least not without hurting himself. He forces a nod instead, if only to distract himself from the pains he is still cataloguing.
Glancing around him once more as the older seer stirs something in a pot over the hearth, he closes his eyes, fighting back a reaction in his light as he realizes again that he is not in his own room. He has never been permitted to sleep elsewhere––certainly not around other seers. Even in Serbia, he shared a tent with his uncle and Tujek, one of his uncle’s closest seers.
He was never allowed to be alone with Wreg or the others while unconscious.
Not that I’m not grateful, brother, he sends after another pause. But why am I here?
Wreg tosses a small log on the fire, waving away the sparks that rise. Straightening from a crouch, he grunts a little, looking at the younger seer.
“They must have hit you hard on the head,” he says. “That was almost polite.”
Seeing the younger seer’s face twist in the approximation of a scowl, stopped by the pain in his jaw and mouth, he smiles wider, shaking his head.
“…Not that I’m complaining,” he adds.
He pauses, still assessing the other with his eyes and light.
“The truth is, they did hit you pretty hard, runt,” he says. “Your uncle was not happy about this. He wanted some of our people to discuss this problem with the humans who did this.”
Nenzi feels his heart beating harder, hurting his chest.
When he grips the side of the wooden frame though, struggling up to a seated position, Wreg abruptly holds up a hand, clicking as he walks closer to the cot. He gestures sharply for him to remain where he is, using the command form, rather than the polite one. Sending a pulse of his light to emphasize the point, he continues to stand over him until he feels the younger seer’s acquiescence in his light.
“You’re to stay here, Nenz,” Wreg says. “At least a few weeks. Boss’ orders. He wants you off the street for awhile.” He gives an apologetic shrug. “And I’m afraid your days of fighting for money are over permanently. You’ll have to find another way to earn extra coin. Boss was pretty clear about that, too.”
When Nenzi doesn’t answer, Wreg sighs, wandering back to the other bed, against the opposite wall. Sitting heavily, he frowns in the younger seer’s direction.
“Did you hear me, runt?” Wreg says. “Or should I bring your uncle in here?”
Nenzi doesn’t feel him relax until he gestures his understanding.
Wreg smiles humorlessly. “You can take orders, then. Just not from me.”
Nenzi doesn’t answer that, either.
He hopes this will discourage the other from talking, but it doesn’t.
“So you slept with the Franzin girl,” Wreg says after another pause. “She’s pretty Nenz. Very pretty.”
The other speaks from his mind, before he knows he intends to.
She’s a fucking bitch, he sends, wincing when he inadvertently clenches his jaw. Her brother. He was with them… at least one brother. Maybe more than one.
Wreg chuckles, resting his tattooed forearms on his knees as he leans against the wall, sitting on the blankets covering his wider bed.
“Yes,” he says. “We know. What did you do to her, runt, to make her so angry?”
Nothing. I broke it off with her.
“Really?” Wreg grins wider. “And she did not take this so well?”
Nenzi gestures at the blood-stained shirt he still wears, the lump on his jaw, the gash in the side of his pants where another of them cut him.
Apparently not, he sends.
Wreg chuckles again. His eyes continue to watch him though, holding that vague humor, but with something else shining brighter underneath. Nenzi feels it before he sees it, a cold calculation under that surface guise of male camaraderie.
He is being scanned. Probed.
He suspects he knows the reason why, even before the other speaks.
“She knew what you were, Nenz,” Wreg says.
Nenzi gives him a hard look. That was an accident.
“An accident?”
Yes.
“What kind of accident?”
What kind do you think? he sends, letting the other feel his annoyance.
Wreg just looks at him, his eyes holding a more honest irritation. When he breaks the silence next, he is shaking his head, his mouth hard.
“You know, Nenz,” he says softly. “From the very beginning, you have been more work for me than all of my other seers combined. Not a one of your brothers under my command pains me so often, nor so deeply.”
Nenzi doesn’t answer that.
When the silence stretches, he fights to turn himself slowly on the bed, gripping the edges to try and lower his body to the thin mattress. His arms are weak, however, and he grips until his knuckles are white, fighting his own breaths.
When he lands on his back on the padding, he gives a low gasp of pain, unable to make himself move further for a moment, once he is there. He lays with his eyes closed, fighting back the image of the woman’s face.
“Why didn’t you erase her, Nenz?” Wreg asks.
I was going to.
“When?”
I was going to, he repeats stubbornly.
“But you didn’t.”
No. I didn’t.
“Again I ask you… why?”
Why do you think? he sends, opening his eyes just long enough to glare at the other seer. She got off on it. She sucked me off… I liked it. I hadn’t made up my mind to stop yet.
Wreg grimaced, averting his gaze.
“You’re pathetic, Nenzi.”
The younger seer might have smiled, but he couldn’t do that, either. Wincing, he lay an arm over his eyes, avoiding the worst of the bruises, and resting it there gingerly.
Fuck you, Wreg.
“…I’m not even talking about your infantile obsession with human pussy,” Wreg adds, as if he doesn’t hear him. “Although that is pathetic, too. I am talking about your complete lack of self control, no matter what the cost to others of our kind. I am talking about your seeming inability to put the needs of the cause before your own dick.”
His voice grows harsher. “If they hadn’t done such a job on you, I’d be taking a strap to you myself. Do you know that, little Nenz? I don’t give a fuck who your uncle is. I would beat you if only in the hope that it might finally be the thing to reach you.”
Nenzi laughs. It hurts him to do it, but he can’t help it.
The words depress him, too.
Give it your best shot, Wreg, he sends bitterly.
Wreg clicks at him, shaking his head.
“Again, you miss the point.” His voice now holds a thread of disgust. “Did it not occur to you, young brother, that you put all of our lives and identities at risk, with your love of this woman’s mouth on you? And now I have to hunt down those fuckers. Eliminate them and whoever they’ve bragged to. Including the brother seer they hir
ed to help them bring you down.”
His voice hardens more.
“I do not like killing my own kind, Nenz. I do not like it at all. Not for any reason. Certainly not for your stupidity.”
At this, the younger seer can’t help but look at him.
After studying his eyes for a moment, Wreg clicks softly. That time, his voice holds a fainter thread of satisfaction.
“Yes, brother Nenz… you finally understand. What did you think we would be doing, to clean up this mess? Or did you presume we could simply let it be known that we have seers here in Dresden, masquerading as humans? That we are armed, and skilled in hand-to-hand combat. That we like to seduce German girls when we are not drunk and shooting at Serbs?”
Clicking again in annoyance, he folds his fingers together.
“To do this killing risks us, too. But then, you knew that. And it can’t be helped.”
Nenzi feels his jaw harden, despite the pain.
And the girl? he sends finally. Gretchen?
Wreg frowns at him, his eyes holding a faint disbelief.
“The girl is dead, Nenz,” he says, clicking in annoyance. “What do you think? That we would let her tell more people about your dick?”
Nenzi feels something cold in his stomach, even as he opens his eyes, staring up at the ceiling. For a moment he sees her face again, her eyes and lips laughing. He sees her as he first knew her behind his eyes… then he forces it out of his light.
He fights to feel nothing about this, then to feel nothing at all about anything.
“Do you want food?” Wreg asks.
After a faint pause, Nenzi gestures a yes.
Wreg climbs off of his bed, long enough to walk to the fire and pull the pot off the hearth that Nenzi had seen him stirring before. He watches as the ink-covered seer ladles broth into a deep wooden bowl, then brings it over to where he lays. He struggles once more to sit up, but the other seer holds up a hand to relax him.
Sitting by him on the cot, Wreg slides an arm under his shoulders and back, moving him up with surprising care. Even so, Nenzi panics briefly at the contact.
Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World Page 37