Shadow (Bridge & Sword: Awakenings #4): Bridge & Sword World

by JC Andrijeski

  Mind the ribs, he sends. I think some are broken.

  “Four,” Wreg acknowledges with a gesture.

  Letting him rest against his side until he is resting on his own legs instead, Wreg hands him the bowl once he is situated. Nenzi takes it with a gesture of thanks.

  Anything else? he sends, meaning his body.

  “You have a concussion,” Wreg says. “A fracture on your hip. There is the ribs and the teeth. A stab wound in your side that nicked your liver. Some internal bleeding, both from being kicked and from the knife. The cut on your leg is less serious, as is the one in your shoulder. Your jaw is fractured, yet this did not break all the way through, which is good. It is already starting to heal, according to Josef.”

  Making another vague gesture with one hand, he puffs out his cheeks with a sigh.

  “Those are the serious things. Mostly you are bruised, Nenz. Pretty much everywhere, from what Josef told us last night. But he thinks the internal bleeding is minor. No arteries were cut. It is lucky for you, that they did not know seer physiology. If you were human, they would have ruptured at least one organ… possibly more than one. It is good for us that the brother they hired did only what they paid him for.”

  And you cannot spare him? Nenzi sends, looking up as he swallows a spoonful of broth.

  Wreg makes a concessionary hand gesture, but his eyes lose some of their coldness.

  “That is up to your uncle.”

  Nenzi nods, sipping the soup after bringing the spoon carefully to his mouth.

  His jaw hurts, even with the guland, and the holes from his missing teeth pain him with every mouthful, but he drinks it down anyway, laboriously slow. The pull of his stomach is more than any of the pains in his mouth, even then.

  They do not talk again until he finishes the entire thing.

  “Go back to sleep, Nenz,” the other seer says then, taking the empty bowl from his fingers, along with the spoon.

  For the first time, Nenzi hears genuine sympathy in the other’s voice.

  Wreg winks at him. “We will talk more about your sins later.”

  Sliding his shoulder back under his, Wreg eases him slowly back to a prone position on the cot, even helping him adjust his shoulders so they are laying almost flat. No matter what side he lies on, it hurts, but his back seems to be doing less damage to the rest of him.

  When he looks up, he finds that Wreg has not moved away.

  He sits there, watching him silently, until Nenzi closes his eyes and once more lets himself drift back into the Barrier’s folds.

  40

  SCARS

  HE WAKES AGAIN.

  Like before, Wreg is the only one there.

  The Chinese-looking seer is crouched by the fire, his long, dark hair in a thick braid, his muscular, tattooed arms resting on his thighs.

  The seer is barefoot, his hair is wet––but it is the smell coming from the cooking pot hanging beside him that draws Nenzi’s eyes.

  Wreg periodically stirs the contents in that iron pot while Nenzi fights to focus his eyes, to remember where he is. When another whiff of the smell reaches his nose, his stomach growls loudly, even as he feels a kind of longing pain envelop his light.

  Wreg glances up at him, smiling a bit, his eyes almost friendly.

  “I thought food might be the thing to wake you, pup,” he says.

  “How long have I slept?”

  He speaks without thinking, only realizing afterwards that he can.

  Wreg gives him another nod. “Over a week. Almost two. You shut down. Went into ungrat, the stasis. Josef has been here daily. He told us you would be fine.”

  Nenzi thinks about this. He knows about the comas seers can put themselves into to heal, but so far as he knows, his body has never done this before.

  It is an odd feeling, to realize he has been out for so long.

  “It feels it,” he acknowledges finally. His jaw is still sore, his throat hoarse, but he can move both, and his face no longer feels tight.

  “You are better then?” Wreg says, as he ladles stew into a deep wooden bowl that now sits in the palm of his hand.

  Watching him, Nenzi feels his tongue thicken in his mouth. Swallowing with an effort, he closes his eyes, wincing as he fights to sit up.

  “I’ll tell you after you give me some of that,” he responds, grunting a little as he rests his weight on his legs. “If you don’t, I may have to fight you, and then I’ll feel worse.”

  Wreg laughs, even as Nenzi holds the edge of the cot, fighting a rush of dizziness once his body is more or less vertical.

  He can’t remember the last time he’s felt so weak, or so completely at another’s mercy. He watches the other seer pull up from his crouch in a single, fluid motion, closing the distance to the cot in only a few strides.

  “There is plenty,” Wreg tells him, watching with hands on his waist as the other shovels chunks of potato and carrot and beef into his mouth, eyes glazed. “The others have eaten, so the rest is yours.” He glances at the pot, as if calculating. “Four more bowls, anyway. If you want.”

  “I want,” Nenzi says.

  Wreg smiles again, sitting down as he watches him eat. He brings him a second bowl a few minutes later. Nenzi is nearly finished with that one as well, before he speaks again.

  “You still do skin art, Wreg?” he says, motioning at him with the spoon. “The inks?”

  Wreg gives him a puzzled look, then a smile.

  “Ceremonial inks, you mean?” He holds up his own arm, showing a pattern with multiple colors, adorned with symbols the other recognizes from books, along with images of twisting snakes and clouds filled with fire. “Like these?”

  “Yes.” Nenzi nods, handing him the bowl for another refill. He watches as the seer regains his feet, walking easily back to the fire. “I am told you did Rajan’s. The sea creatures.”

  Wreg acknowledges this with a dismissive gesture from by the pot. Filling the bowl a third time, he straightens, bringing it back to the younger seer.

  “Yes,” he says simply. “I did that one.”

  “It is good work,” Nenzi says.

  Surprise blossoms faintly in the older seer’s eyes, but it does not reach his expression. “Are you buttering me up for something, Nenz?” he says only. “Or should I simply say, thank you, brother… and hope for the best?”

  Nenzi ignores the other’s smile.

  “Would you do some for me?” he says. “I can pay.”

  Wreg’s eyes turn faintly predatory in the pause, but there is a wariness there too, just visible above the softer smile.

  “Some?” he says, still watching the other eat. “Just how many do you want, little brother? Are you looking to recreate the pantheon on your back?”

  “I want two,” he says, again ignoring the other’s sarcasm. “Two of the colored drawings. I want them to be with seer ink––the kind that remains.”

  Wreg’s eyes grow appraising once more.

  “What are these inks you want, young brother?” he says. “What are the symbols?”

  Nenzi looks around the low-ceilinged room, still eating the stew, although much slower now, savoring the pieces of meat. Swallowing what is chewed and in his mouth, he gestures around the room with one hand.

  “Do you have the Second Codex?” he says.

  Wreg gives him a faintly surprised smile, then nods, once.

  Rising to his feet, he walks to a cabinet not far from the foot of his bed, one obscured in shadows that lay outside the circle of firelight. Nenzi watches him open the wooden doors, revealing a number of shelves holding leather-bound books and papers. Some of the latter look older than the books, tied with thongs and rolled and fastened with heavier weights.

  Glancing over spines, Wreg uses the tips of his fingers to tug out one of the larger volumes. A few inches in thickness, it wears a thick, leather cover, dyed forest green.

  He brings it over to the younger seer, who watches as he places it on the cot, only about a foot from hi
s leg. Nenzi’s eyes don’t leave the book as he sets his bowl on the wooden floor, wiping his hands carefully on his shirt until they are completely dry.

  He leans over the book, opening its cover gingerly before sliding his fingers between pages to reach somewhere in the middle of the book. Once in the rough section he wants, he flips through pages, scanning the numbers on the sides.

  Wreg grunts, watching him.

  Nenzi hears something in his voice that almost sounds impressed.

  “You can find it without the key?” he says, his voice musing. “I admit, I would never have guessed you would know the Commentaries so well, runt. Even with who your uncle is.”

  Nenzi ignores this, flipping two more pages before his fingers rest on the segment he is looking for. He points at the passages, waiting for Wreg to move himself so that he is seated on the cot on his other side, the book between them.

  “Here,” he says, unnecessarily. “Can you do this one?”

  “The whole segment? 1023-1055?”

  “Yes.”

  Wreg reads it, squinting somewhat in the dim light. When he finishes, he raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. Nenzi feels the other seer keeping the bulk of his reaction out of his light, where he might see it.

  “Can you do it in the original language?” he says. “The old tongue, I mean?”

  Wreg gestures assent, as though this were a detail. Looking up from the book once more, where he is apparently reading the passage again, he gives Nenzi a neutral look.

  “And where do you want this thing?” he says.

  Nenzi points to the upper part of his left arm.

  “There?” Wreg frowns. “You want the text to circle there? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  There is a silence where Wreg only looks at him. Then he gestures at him again, his eyes neutral. “And the other? You said there are two you want?”

  Nenzi gestures a yes. “I want the Sword and Sun. The old version. I want the one with the high flames, with the gold center. Blue, white, gold.”

  Wreg’s eyes narrow slightly. “And where do you want this one, my friend?”

  He points to his left shoulder. “I’d like it to be big,” he adds. “Can you do that, brother?”

  Wreg only looks at him for a moment, arms folded, dark eyes unwavering. Finally, he sighs at whatever he sees in Nenzi’s face, clicking a little under his breath.

  “Are you sure you don’t have the placements backwards, runt? You know what you are asking for, don’t you?”

  Nenzi nods. “I am sure.”

  Wreg’s eyes remain unconvinced. “The left shoulder,” he says finally. “You know what this placement means?”

  Nenzi gestures another yes. “Yes, brother. It is what I will live for.”

  “And the left arm?”

  “It is what I will die for.”

  Wreg frowns deeper, still looking at him, as if trying to read past his eyes without reaching out directly with his light.

  “It is not tradition, Nenzi,” he says. “You know we wear the Sword and Sun there, on the arm. It is where we all wear it. All of us. And it is so in the old texts.”

  Nenzi nods. “I know.” Meeting Wreg’s gaze, he lets the older seer feel him, something he almost never does. He opens his light, holding his gaze, so Wreg will feel his truth.

  “It is not disrespect, brother,” he says. “It is not.”

  Wreg only looks at him, but it is clear from his face that he has felt what Nenzi showed him.

  He grunts a little, his eyes still assessing as he studies the younger seer’s face.

  “Okay,” he says. “Yes, I see that. I just do not understand.”

  Trailing, he shrugs again, as if not sure what to add to this.

  “Do you need to?” Nenzi asks.

  Wreg frowns at him. After another pause, he sighs again, clicking.

  “No, brother. I do not.” He continues to look at him though, that frown on his lips. “And you want seer ink, Nenz? Those do not come off so easily, runt. And while I may believe you that there is no disrespect in this, others may not.”

  “I don’t care about the others,” he says.

  “You should,” Wreg says, quieter. “They are your kin.”

  “Then they should respect my will,” he says, looking up at Wreg. “It is not for them that I do this. Not for them, nor against them.”

  After another pause, Wreg nods again, his eyes grudging.

  “Yes,” he says. “I see this, too.”

  “And I do not want these to come off,” Nenzi adds, his voice hard for the first time. “I want them deep, Wreg. As deep as you can make them.”

  After another pause, where the older seer seems to be trying to read his face once more, he nods. That time, it is decisive.

  “Yes,” he says. “I can do that.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  Wreg is already standing.

  He walks back to his bed as Nenzi watches, kneeling down to pull a wooden box out from under the frame. He unlocks the iron latch with a key he keeps around his neck, then opens the top and rummages through clothing and other belongings inside.

  Nenzi continues to watch as he pulls out a hand-held device of some greenish-colored metal. He has seen it a few times, in this set of barracks––and even on the field, as seers used it to tally their human kills on their skin.

  Wreg then shuffles more items around, and pulls out a number of smaller glass jars. Several of these are filled with some clear liquid, but three of them carry colors so bright they seem to glow in the dim, fire-lit room.

  Anticipation prickles his skin as the seer rolls all of this up in a stretched skin, grabbing a bag out of the top of the bin and bringing all of it over to him.

  “Take off your shirt.” Wreg gestures at him, matter-of-fact.

  Nenzi barely hesitates before he pulls the thing over his head, wincing as it sticks to dried blood from cuts on his skin. He shifts his weight on the cot as he pulls it off, exposing his left arm and side to the older seer as Wreg lays out his tools on the cot.

  “Do we need to cover the sheets?” Nenzi says. “There will be a lot of blood, right?”

  Wreg doesn’t answer him.

  When Nenzi glances back, he sees the seer staring at his back, his eyes holding an open disbelief. Grief replaces the bewilderment in the older seer’s eyes as Nenzi watches, bringing an odd pain to his chest once he realizes what it is from. He tries to find words, to explain this away somehow, but his throat closes around any he might have had.

  “Gaos d’argulem,” Wreg says finally. “What happened to you, runt?”

  Nenzi’s throat tightens more.

  He shakes it off, gesturing dismissively.

  “Can you work around it?” he says. “Is there room for what I want?”

  Wreg frowns when Nenzi looks at him again, but it is clear from his eyes that he hears the evasion in the other’s voice, the unwillingness to discuss it.

  After another pause, Wreg gestures back, just as dismissively.

  “Yes. It will not get in the way.” His eyes return to his tools as he lays out the jars in a row on the cloth he has spread. He focuses again on the younger seer’s back. When Nenzi looks at his face, he sees Wreg’s eyes hold something for a moment, enough to make him pause.

  Noticing his stare, Wreg carefully blanks his face, pulling a stack of clean rags from the bag down by his feet on the floor.

  “I do not mean to question your judgment, Nenz,” he says into the silence. “I only want you to be sure. It takes a lot to scar a seer––to really scar them. We tend to heal. Unless it is too deep to grow over.”

  Nenzi nods, hearing the second meaning behind this, too.

  “I know,” is all he says.

  41

  LENA

  HE WALKS DOWN an alleyway behind the same bar, hours later.

  It is dark outside now.

  He had less trouble talking Wreg into letting him go than he th
ought he would. He promised him he would not stay out of doors for long, or let anyone see him on the street, but he is still surprised the other let him leave.

  His shoulder hurts, and his arm, but he feels exhilarated, knowing what lives under the bandages Wreg bound to his freshly-inked skin. The work is good, better even than he envisioned, and he looked at it in the mirrored glass in awe when Wreg showed him the final product. Even with parts of it bleeding still, the shocking bright of the colors overwhelmed him, and the dark permanence of the words on his flesh feel like an ongoing prayer.

  Or a promise, perhaps.

  To himself, as much as her.

  If he can’t be with her down here, he will meet her in that other place. He will die for her. Eventually, everything he does will have been for her.

  His aleimi vibrates with the knowledge of where his feet take him now.

  When he first told his unit leader where he wanted to go, Wreg gave him a hard look.

  “What are you asking me, runt?”

  Nenzi’s face warms as he looks at the dark eyes of the elder seer. Still, the wanting keeps him asking, keeps him from backing down from that stare.

  “Do you know of any, Wreg?” he says. “In town. I have heard rumors.”

  “You should not be frequenting such places,” the older seer warns. “You should not pay money to support such a thing. It is slavery, Nenz. It is wrong.”

  To this Nenzi can only look at him, feeling his jaw hurt like razor blades in his mouth when he bites his lip. The swelling has gone down a lot while he slept, but his teeth and bones still hurt, enough that he blinks back a gasp when he clenches them out of habit.

  Wreg just looks at him for a moment, as if assessing him again.

  Nenzi knows the other has been trying to get closer to him in some way, to find some means of connecting with him, of reaching him perhaps, in the hopes he might influence his behavior, maybe. He sees the difficulty of it for the older seer, enough to feel some element of gratitude, even compassion for his attempt.

  He sees this in the other’s eyes even now, in the other’s light, but he cannot let himself comment on it. He cannot let the other seer be overly successful, either.