Trail of Pyres

by L. James Rice

  Iro slung his cloak from his left shoulder, revealing a scarred stub. “I left my arm on the battlefield because of that witch. I’ll have her head.”

  Ivin stared at the man’s imbalanced body and shivered. He felt no need for flattery nor lies. “She’ll have yours. Not that I mind.”

  “No doubt you’d like me dead.” Iro stared, then stood to pace before leaning against a wall. “When I was a boy—”he chuckled”—my cousin and me would visit the Temple of the Virgin Moon like the devout boys we pretended to be. In the temple, halls are filled with statues, priests say to whisper into their ears is to speak to the gods themselves.” His head wobbled, his eyebrows arched. “There is one statue, oh! She is a beauty. With only seashells covering her breasts and a tiny starfish between her legs. No boy, no man, can walk her by without a second glance and a wish she were flesh and warmth.

  “We’d whisper into her earsok and giggle at our flirtatious games. Cup the fine bulge of her ass when no priests were looking. We’d stare, imagine removing those shells, how supple her teets must be… how full her nipples.” He sighed. “Ah, a boy’s fantasies. Then one day you accept the truth you already knew for so long. Know you this truth?”

  “It’s your long-winded tale, enlighten me.”

  “No matter how lovely, what lay behind the shells and the starfish is rough, unhewn stone. There was no secret, no something greater, they are what they appear to be. To this day.”

  Ivin rubbed his eyes. “Is there a point?”

  “You, my friend, are those tits!” He laughed, slapped a knee with his remaining hand. “I so wanted to find something more in you, someone worthy. The bishop commanded me to torture you, find what sits behind your seashells, but my time is more valuable, I think. You are what you are, a stupid boy who knows nothing. A piece in someone else’s game.”

  “Priests in Istinjoln, priests in Sin Medor… The both of us, we aren’t pieces, we’re mice at the cat’s paw.”

  Iro’s smile faded, and he shrugged. Grimaced at his left shoulder. “You may be more right than I’d care to admit. Perhaps we are both tits carved from cold rock.”

  “I’ll take tits over some of the carvings I’ve seen.” His mind drew pictures of the Hall of Faces on the journey to the Crack of Burdenis. But then, one of those had eight breasts.

  Iro guffawed. “Invon, known as the Fat Man…” Iro waved his hand in the air. “Silly musings. I find it shameful the bishop will have you killed, you aren’t a bad sort for a barbarian.”

  “It’ll be a shame when Sedut takes your head.”

  “Not to worry! You’ll be dead before then, slowly, I fear.” He laughed and put a hand to the door’s iron pull. “May our ends be swift.”

  “Aye, may our ends be swift.”

  Iro nodded, grabbed the hooded lantern, and stepped through the door. The guard turned the key with a metallic grind and clink and the world turned black.

  The chains at Ivin’s wrists rattled as he pressed his hands to his eyes, and his wits returned. Fresh air. Fresh air meant hope in a dungeon. He opened his eyes, stood, realizing it wasn’t dark because they imprisoned him in a hole. It was dark because it was night. Windows large enough for a man to crawl through ringed his chamber, and his view overlooked a city lit at the street corners by torches and lanterns. Far below a carriage with four lanterns rolled past.

  It was no less a prison than a hole in the ground, but at least he had a view. A view to feed the fantasy of escape. If he were a spider. A spider who knew how to pick a manacle’s lock.

  He unbuckled his belt and aimed where he recalled seeing a chamber pot. “Too bad there isn’t a lower window, I could at least piss on one of the bastards.”

  27

  Scented Waters

  Cloudless skies and rain beaten sand;

  what devil from the sun?

  what devil from the moon?

  What mortal stands tall to Celestial thunder

  once struck by its lightning?

  —Tomes of the Touched

  Inster had been a flesh-cramped, bustling hive to a girl who grew up in a village and a monastery. Meliu’d spent her childhood in Veleen, as much a mining camp as a village, truth be told, and Istinjoln was a place you could be alone in the middle of thousands, with its winding tunnels and tucked away shrines.

  The walls of Bdein were brownstone and mortar with towers surging from the land, and they stretched to the horizon and beyond. They stood lower than the Monastery of Istinjoln or the Fost, but their breadth stole her will. Her mouth dried and her gut fluttered; if only half the people within those walls would gut her if they discovered who she was, it was still more people than she’d ever bothered to imagine breathing in one place. The broad gates stood wide enough for four carts to pass side by side, and upon the high towers to either side, bronze statues towered further toward the sky: Pulvuer to the north with an eagle on his shoulder, and his pegasus steed, Kiholu, to the south. She’d rather slither into a fissure beneath Istinjoln than pass between the monuments which guarded the city’s gates, but in a holy city like Bdein, she’d need to grow accustomed to pagan gods, even if it gave her shivers.

  She mustered her resolve, and once inside Bdein she understood what folks meant when they spoke of foreign cities. The streets were a wicked maze even compared to monastery tunnels, and more cramped when you accounted for the press of stinking foreigners. Even when they smelled good, which was rare enough, their perfumes overwhelmed her nostrils and burned her eyes. She never figured she’d come to dislike the scent of a flower, but the honey-rose some of the women in fine silks wore damned near made her sneeze more than once.

  After three days in Bdein, a week without an ocean bath, and feeling more an urchin than a heroine on a virtuous mission, she smelled herself as often as others. That was the squat to rip the stitches, as Ilpen would say; if she was going to sneak past guards, she needed not to reek, anyhow.

  There were inns a plenty to draw a bath, but she’d spent what few crowns remained after getting to Bdein. Prices in the city were high compared even to Inster. Her remaining coins were songs given her by the Choerkin; it was enough silver and gold to see her survive for months, but the songs might draw unwanted attention. And her small stash of gems, they were for pure desperation. Before sundown she meandered to the northern merchant district and sneaked into a stable for a bed of straw, figuring morning might be the quietest and safest time to seek out steam and soap.

  She awoke before dawn, pulled her boots on, and stepped into the street wearing a linen dress instead of the burlap robes she’d scuttled around in the past few days. She left her haver, stuffed with clothes and black hair dye for Ivin, and other gear buried deep in a corner of straw. Shops were still closed, but stirring to life; folks wandered into the streets to empty chamber pots into the sewers (a step up from throwing them out the windows in seedier parts of Bdein) and unchained display carts and unlocked doors.

  The Raspberry and Rose stood two blocks away, a monstrous three-story inn. A street crier stood outside its doors every day, boasting of private baths and scented soaps for merchants and travelers.

  Meliu straightened her back and carried herself with a dignity she hadn’t portrayed since arriving; it was time to be a merchant’s daughter, and hope she could hide any accent.

  She took three steps before a child crashed through a door and scrambled on all fours past her knees. A young girl, followed by a bellowing bastard

  “Worthless rat.”

  The child turned with tear streaked eyes and stood; a backhand sent her tumbling to the cobbles. Blood streaked her cheek, and she wavered on all fours like a dazed and wounded crab.

  Meliu stepped between them. “Hands off this child.”

  The man weighed seventy stone and gave her a shove, but Meliu didn’t give him the satisfaction of falling. She planted her feet. “You dare lay hands on me? Do you know who my father is?”

  The shopkeep snagged the stumbling girl by the hair, stari
ng at Meliu. “You think I give a goat’s piss who your pa is? I’ll do as I please with my own blood.” He spit at Meliu’s feet and drug the girl through the shop’s doors.

  Meliu stared, her gut twisting with memories of her own pa. He didn’t hit her often, but when he did, there wasn’t no one without a blade who could stand in his way. Folks in the street cast glances her way, trying hard not to stare, so she turned her eyes to the foaming spittle on her boot. Some Hidreng girl wasn’t reason enough to draw attention to herself.

  She wasn’t thinking straight; going soft in the head. Or for the first time in her life, she believed she could make a difference. But this wasn’t the difference she needed to make.

  The Raspberry and Rose opened their doors for her without hesitation, and a hostess who smelled of berries pointed her to the baths. The interior of the inn was constructed from massive amber-veined granite blocks polished to a sheen, and three arches led into the bath hall. An older woman greeted her with a smile. “Bathing today, m’lady?”

  Meliu swallowed hard and answered, praying she got the inflections right. “Yes, please. A private bath, scented.”

  “Preferred perfume?”

  Anything that doesn’t make me sneeze. “What do you recommend for business at the tower?”

  “You’ve business with the tower?” That brought a smile to her face. “Well, hmmm. Something mild, lilac?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Four crowns, and if you’d like breakfast?”

  Meliu handed her a fifty-silver song. The woman stared, and Meliu spoke with what she hoped was a proper disgust. “Father has been doing too much business with the barbarians from the north. I hope you don’t mind. Will it suffice for breakfast?”

  “Will it?” The woman laughed and slipped the coin into her dress with a glance to either side. She slipped her own coins into the money box. She winked. “You don’t tell, I won’t tell. Use the bath four arches down, on your right, hot water and a queen’s breakfast will be on the way. You’ll smell like a goddess when you visit the tower.”

  Meliu nodded with a smile, leaned in with a soft voice. “Could you exchange several coins? I nabbed them from my father’s trunk, he’ll never notice, but… I don’t know where to spend them, my father knows everybody.”

  Meliu’s steps bounced into the bath stall. She took a loss on the songs, but she wouldn’t stand out trying to spend her silver now. At the sight of her new best friend, she forgot her luck with new coins; a tub of hammered copper stared at her, polished to a sheen and beckoning to swallow her.

  Steaming lilac water arrived within a few flares. She stripped, making sure her crowns, and the vial of Ulrikt’s poison, weren’t nowhere someone could reach. She eased into the water. Flinching, slow. Godsdamned hot, but the lick of the rising water and its steam felt like heaven. And the lilac was mild as promised, unoffensive to her nose. Breakfast was three sunny eggs, spiced sausage, heavy dark bread, a jam from some fruit she didn’t recognize (but oh, it made her eyes roll into the back of her head with delight), and more honey-butter than she’d seen on a full table. The mug of drink was thick, the juice of some fruit, she guessed. Its sweet and sour was tastier than anything she’d ever drank, without alcohol in it, at least. Maids served the feast on a dimpled brass tray which stretched across the tub.

  This was a moment in life she’d never imagined.

  Stuffed to her ears with food she rested her head on the tub, letting her eyelids droop until the world was a mere sliver. But she didn’t trust no one enough to shut them for the nap she craved. The coins were her lifeblood, and the poison… she questioned whether she could use it at all, but if caught with such a thing, they’d hang her or worse.

  What kind of poison is it? Her study in such things was scant. Few religious tomes spoke of such things. Rumors abounded over the Coerkin poisoning at the Watch: Delusions, violence, a brown foam at the mouth, and seizures. Death. No way Tokodin did such a thing. No how. She splashed her face; morbid musings struck the joy from her bath. She meditated, aware with eyes cracked, and managed a stretch of peace.

  Her fingers and toes shriveled before she climbed from the tub. She slipped into her dress, patting the coins and vial in their concealed pockets. She brushed her hair while staring into a mirror; it was the first in some time she looked and felt proper. She popped the last slice of a purplish fruit into her mouth before strolling refreshed into the street.

  She meandered back the way she came, stopping when she saw the little girl hunkered against the shop wall, crying again.

  There’s something wrong with me. She walked straight into the shop without a clue what she was doing. The girl’s father haggled with a couple of grizzled men, and for an instant she saw her own pa’s face. And she wanted nothing more than to cover it in Dark. Forever. Terrorizing the man until either his wits or his life fled his body. She turned, a hand slipping into a pocket to find the vial.

  There was a way to discover what this poison did.

  Her heart beat to a terrible rhythm as she glanced at a mug sitting by the man’s money box.

  She skulked close, never believing she would do such a thing. If caught, she’d die. Any chance to save Ivin would be tossed like so much piss into the sewer. She looked to the men as a blustering argument over the quality of the owner’s steel erupted, and in a blink she dripped poison in his cup.

  Not a lot. Not enough to kill him. Was it? She turned, doing her best to hide a buckle in her knees. If she’d just orphaned the girl, there was no way to say she was better off. And gods forbid the girl take a drink.

  “Hey. Hey! Little lady, there something I could do for you?”

  She stood in the middle of the shop. Staring. He didn’t recognize her, or if he did, didn’t care. She shook her head, dashed through the door into the street.

  She trotted away.

  Stormed back.

  Turned to leave again.

  A glance inside ended all wonder: he drank from his mug. And Meliu clutched her face, stretching her cheeks with a shaky exhale. What have I done? It couldn’t be worse than the Dark. He’s not my father.

  Drying mud streaked the girl’s face, tears smeared by dirty fingers trying to wipe away signs of pain. She couldn’t stay here. She marched across the street. She couldn’t leave. She paced and hovered, doing her damnedest to be inconspicuous. The girl wandered inside. The men left. No screams. Patrons came and went. Meliu’s nerves eased. She hadn’t given him enough to kill; maybe the bastard would just get a nasty case of the shits.

  The beat of her heart slowed, and she giggled. She strode to the door, glanced inside. The owner patted his daughter on the head, but then wagged a threatening finger in her face.

  She isn’t me, he’s not my pa, the child means nothing. She was playing the fool and wondered if her prayers for Dark hadn’t damaged her wits.

  There were more important matters to attend to. She could check on the girl tomorrow. No. No good reason for that neither. Get Ivin, get the hells out of Bdein.

  Forget this girl and my pa. She turned toward the Tower of Markuun. Books called it a tower, but in truth it was a fortress, with high walls and two dozen towers, and a sprawling keep on the eastern wing. The only entrance was a western gate, and once inside, the streets led to a multitude of temples.

  A dozen breaths and twice as many strides focused her thoughts. Ulrikt’s words rang in her head: We Silone give our prisoners a view of darkness and stone, the Hidreng give them open windows and weather, the more hated the prisoner, the higher their rise. Ivin might stare her way now from the highest point in the tower. Maybe he slept beneath the green pennant flapping from a pole, free to step to his death at a tortured whim.

  With her Hidreng practiced to near perfection, it was time to stop trying to figure a way to sneak over the walls, it was time to walk straight past the guards. She traveled due south from the northern merchant district, as straight a line as she’d found in this city, but the avenue led to streets which
felt as if someone laid them out on the strings of yarn a kitten played with.

  The roads wound and twisted one into the other, all cobbled, but the lesser alleys bore bricks jutting to take one’s toes for a fall. When first she arrived she took half a day to find her way to the gates of Markuun; today, it only took her a quarter candle. She’d walked the route several times each day, and a different path out, testing variants in case of a chase.

  The gate of Markuun sat between two round towers with an open portcullis and two guards to either side. The men stood stiff as statues, golden masks depicting a hawk covering their faces, and hooked halberds with butts planted by their feet. A breeze blew indigo tassels hanging from the shafts of the weapons and ruffled the plumes rising from their silver-gilt helms.

  The fifth guard was the one that mattered.

  Blood-red robes draped to their ankles, and they wore a silver wolf mask, its snarling teeth polished onyx. In this person’s hand was a scroll. For a full day, Meliu studied those who entered the Tower, pushing her hearing the best she could; most who entered sought the Temple of the Virgin Moon. The whole godsdamned religion seemed to have a virgin fetish, the most famous being the Thonians sacrificing them on an altar. But it turned out Virgin Moon meant new moon.

  Upon hearing this explanation, the puzzle fell together: God Wars histories spoke of the Hokandite joining the mortal peoples during the new moon, and their worshippers still believed this was the best time to pray to their gods.

  Today wasn’t a day to loiter; she stuck her chin out and walked straight to the priest with stone fangs. Black eyes sat in the black holes of the silver face. Today the voice was a woman’s. “Your name, child.”

  “Inis, daughter of Ulbor, merchant of the Librec River.” To her ear, her pronunciation was perfect, but she couldn’t read a face behind silver. A curt nod and the priest scrawled her name on the scroll. Ulbor now had a daughter he’d never heard of. Meliu placed a tiny gold coin on the scroll and bowed.