by Lyn Lowe
Maybe the man felt it too, because he stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to flash a crooked smile that was so unlike than everything else he witnessed in the man, it might as well be a different person looking at him. “My Mistress isn’t in the city, and the ship going back to Lindel won’t arrive for three months. It will take a while to get back. She wouldn’t want me telling anyone else. So I guess you have some time before anyone knows. Before they’ll come hunting you.”
“Uh… thanks.”
“Goodbye Rosy.” And then he was gone. Just another hooded figure swallowed by the great city.
Nineteen
On his way back through the pass, Kaie brushed past a few handfuls of people. They were always to the left, and they were always running. The only acknowledgement that they even saw him was a tiny tip of their heads as they fluttered past in the gossamer white gowns of the servant caste. But, in the manse itself, there was no one. Judah and Tovan were both gone. The dining table was flipped upside-down, and the door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Kaie could only think of one likely scenario that would account for those things. But, if the other men did tell Gregor, the Rit was gone now too. He couldn’t even find a servant.
Time stretch on without interruption, and the place grew dark. Pacing the grounds quickly lost his interest, so with nothing else to do, Kaie took a long soak in the pool. The water felt amazing, as always. No matter how long the sun beat down on it – almost directly, by midday – the pool was always several degrees cooler than the air. Gregor was convinced it was some magic in the water, but Kaie suspected a more mundane process. Whatever the source, Kaie was grateful for sensation of refreshment that spread through his body as he relaxed.
He tried to focus on Kissa, tried to come up with somewhere they could take her that would be safe. He tried to wrap his mind around the reality that she was no longer the girl who helped to steal who he was, and not to feel cheated of his revenge. He even tried to come up with something he could say to Gregor, to explain how sorry he felt and make everything a little better. But no matter how hard he worked to stop it, Kaie’s thoughts kept turning back to the madman with the purple rings in his eyes.
There was no reason to believe the man knew him. More than likely, it was nothing more than a coincidence. The lunatic probably said the same thing to everyone. But Kaie couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it. And he couldn’t explain why the man brought his strange dream to mind so strongly that, for a moment, he almost believed he was back in the middle of it. There was something going on between them, something important, and he was missing it.
“I suppose I should be surprised to find you out here.”
Kaie jumped, nearly dunking his head under the water in his surprised scramble to keep his balance. Gregor stepped out of the shadows cast by the few trees in the full moon. There was no blank mask on the Rit’s face. There was something else there, something dark and furious.
“My sister is Hollow, maybe getting used by every officer in the Twelfth, and my friend Kaie is taking a bath.”
“Tovan told you then.” Kaie felt stupid, saying that. Of course Tovan told him. But faced with the Rit’s anger for the first time, he was finding it difficult to keep hold of any of the things he thought to say. “Gregor, I’m –”
“Don’t you tell me you’re sorry. Not you.”
He snapped his mouth closed on the words. Kaie didn’t understand why he seemed to be the focus of Gregor’s anger. But if that was what his friend needed, he could take it. “Alright. How about if I tell you what I’ve found…”
A large, ugly man stepped into the garden behind Gregor. The man’s skin, as dark as any native of Hudukul, was a tapestry of scars. One brown eye stared at Kaie with a gleeful malevolence that sent a shiver down his spine. The other was little more than a slit, yet another scar holding it closed.
Kaie knew who the man was. Everyone knew who this man was. Silvertongue. “What is he doing here?”
“Do you still want to know what the letter Kissa sent you with said?”
Kaie glanced back and forth between the men, straining to figure out what was going on. Silvertongue was one of the only members of the Twelfth Gregor didn’t trust. He was a hero of sorts, at least among those loyal to Urazin. He was captured by some enemy in one of the endless wars Urazin fought. The stories all said that he was tortured for almost a year, and that the last thing his captors did was cut out his tongue. It was also said that he earned each and every scar by refusing to betray his battalion. He was rewarded by a promotion to major, though the title was strictly honorary. He couldn’t speak, read or write. He wasn’t fit for any real command. No one even knew his real name.
Gregor said, more than once, that Silvertongue’s loyalty was to whomever was paying him. In money and, it seemed more importantly, an endless supply of Hollows. What he did to those was talked about at least as often as what was done to him. And the Ninth Rit wasn’t about to let that continue. So it didn’t seem likely Silvertongue would back his play for freedom.
It made less sense for him to be here, now, witnessing this conversation. He wasn’t going to tell anyone, obviously, but Kaie couldn’t think of any scenario where Silvertongue would be offering any sort of comfort to Gregor.
Without knowing what was happening, there was no way Kaie could plan for it. The only thing he could do was play along until he figured out what Gregor was looking for. “Yeah.”
Gregor smiled. It wasn’t a smile that belonged to the man he knew. It was dangerous. “She said I needed to help you find some way to be free. She said she was trusting me to look out for you, because she was risking everything to help you. Hear that? Risking everything.”
“Oh.” Because what else could he say to that? Kaie didn’t even know how to feel about it.
“Do you know what I learned today? Aside from the fact that my sister is a Hollow, I mean.”
“No,” Kaie said cautiously, climbing out of the pool and wrapping one of the towels around his waist. He wanted his clothes, especially with Silvertongue’s eyes on him, but they were on the bench next to Gregor. He got the distinct sense that he didn’t want to be any closer to the Rit when the man was in this mood.
“I learned why my sister is a Hollow. It wasn’t as hard as you’d think. All I had to do was ask Tovan. It seems all Lindel is buzzing with the story. Want to hear it?”
He was pretty confident he didn’t.
“There might be something we can do. I don’t know… but she might not be all gone. You remember that girl I told you about? The Hollow I gave myself away for on the way here? She, I don’t know, responded to me or something. It was crazy, but I know she did. And back in Lindel, there was another one. I’m pretty sure he smiled, when I was about to kill him.”
“You know,” Gregor said, “your ability to lie really is amazing. You always seem to know exactly what we want to hear, and exactly how to say it so that we’ll believe you. I guess I should be proud, that you learned so well under my care.”
“I’m not lying, gods damn it! I called her name and she reacted!”
“Of course. Centuries of Hollows have just been waiting for Kaie the Unbroken to call one of them by name to prove they can be reached after all.”
Kaie flinched. Gregor never said that name. He pressed his lips together. Anything he said would be wrong. Silvertongue smiled at him. He tried not to give any sign of how much it unnerved him.
“The story goes, my sister was responsible for the care of a prisoner. It was her job to make sure he was in his cell when the two Namers arrived to finally make him a Hollow. Instead, she gave into Lady Autumnsong’s demand that he be returned to his family during the wait. Worse, that freedom led to his very unnecessary death. When the Namers arrived and discovered this, they took her away for years. No one knew where she was or what happened to her, until seven months ago. Then the Namer who first took the slave as a prisoner returned to the Autumnsong estate with her in tow. Hollowed.�
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Gregor stopped, as if expecting some response to that. There were half a dozen resting on the tip of Kaie’s tongue, but he kept them there. Not one of them would make this situation any better. He shifted back on the balls of his feet, tensing to make a run for one of the other doors.
“You see my problem now, don’t you?”
“Not exactly,” Kaie admitted.
“My beautiful sister has been Hollowed to save a man I know hates her. I could stop her from being used any more, I could avenge her loss. But the last thing she said to me, the last thing she’ll ever be able to say me, is to see you free.” The Rit took a step closer. “If I take the Aulis from you, I could turn you over to the Autumnsongs. I’m sure I could even come up with a great story about how you tricked us all. But then I would be failing Kissa. I could let you go, let you flee the city and hope you manage to survive, but then you would be escaping justice too, and I can’t allow that.”
This was not his friend anymore. It was time to leave.
Kaie spun, lunging toward one of the many doors behind him. He felt Gregor’s fingers grasp for him, brushing past his hair. For a second, he thought he managed to avoid them, that he was going to make it back into the house. Then he felt the jerk on his neck.
His whole body stopped instantly as the fine gold chain buried itself in the skin of his throat. Kaie dropped to his knees, fingers clawing at the Aulis, as he struggled for breath. Gregor took another step, and the pressure eased. Kaie’s hands smacked against the stone as he gasped and hacked, burning bile rising up in his throat.
“I’m going to do what my sister asked me to. I’m going to make sure you’re free one day. Maybe I’ll have forgiven you, or maybe that will be the day I kill you. But every day until then, every day she’s in that place, you will get the same thing she gets.”
Hot air blasted against his bare shoulder. Understanding slithered through Kaie’s gut, leaving him with a cold terror. He scrambled. He was desperate to get on his feet. Something heavy dropped onto the center of his back. It pressed him down hard. It knocked his chin against the stone. His mouth filled with coppery blood.
“Don’t kill him,” Gregor ordered. A second ago, the Rit was holding the Aulis. Now he sounded far away. Kaie was fighting. It was hard to focus on anything else. But he found Gregor. The man was by the trees. He was leaving.
“This isn’t justice!” Kaie shouted. Panic made his voice loud. Made it crack. His battle wasn’t going well. A hand on his arm pinned it to the ground. He felt hot breath on the back of his neck. He couldn’t get loose. “Don’t do this! This isn’t what you want!”
Gregor looked down at him. The man’s black eyes softened. It was his friend again. He needed to say the right thing. Then it would stop. They would spar again. It would be vicious. At the end, one of them would help the other up. They would still be on the same side.
He opened his mouth. Teeth clamped down on Kaie’s shoulder. It was hard enough to break skin. He screamed. The pressure on his back increased.
The haze cleared. Gregor was gone. Silvertongue caught another arm. He held both wrists with one hand. The other hand ripped away the towel.
Kaie screamed again. He cursed Gregor. He cursed Silvertongue. He cursed Kissa. But mostly he begged. Begged for forgiveness. Begged for it to stop.
Part Three:
The Soldier’s Price
“Only when he is
Lost
Will he find
Time
And there he will
Find his way forward.
Where he walks
Even the greatest
Will catch fire.”
- Excerpt from “The Book of Endings
Twenty
Sparrowfall Dynasty 446
21st year After the Fall
He wasn’t in the garden.
He knew that first, before the pain, before the horror, before the cold anger and mind-numbing humiliation. It was the mystery he clung to, when all those other things rolled through him. It was something to occupy his mind.
It was dim, and his eyes wouldn’t open all the way, so it was difficult to make out details that might give his location away. Kaie was fairly certain that the wall he could see was made of the strange stone, not of the white stuff of the manse. He was certain that he wasn’t on his bedroll. He was too high from the floor, for starters, and Kaie knew the press of the stone against the thin material quite well. Whatever he was laying on now lacked all of that support that came from stone underneath. He found he didn’t like the sensation of hanging over open air.
He wasn’t naked. Not anymore. Now he was in one of the white gowns all the servants wore. It was as soft and thin as a spider’s web, and every bit as cool as it looked.
He tried to sit, but discovered he was tied down. Panic surged through him. He jerked around desperately, a scream ripping loose from his raw throat. Whatever he was laying on tipped over and he landed hard. Sharp, blinding pain stole the air from his lungs.
There was gasp of surprise from somewhere on the left, and the shuffling of feet. Then he lost hold of consciousness.
When Kaie woke up again, the room was light and stifling. He still couldn’t open his eyes all the way. There was a thin coat of gunk clinging to the eyelashes of his right eye that made it hard to see.
He was upright again, though still tied to whatever he was lying on. It took some effort, but he battled down the panic this time. He needed to find out where he was. Escape would be impossible otherwise.
“Hello?”
He heard more of the shuffling, this time from the right side, and a spattering of mutters that he couldn’t make out. “Is someone there?”
A second later, a head of dark brown hair appeared over top of him. Kaie could make out general features – dark-colored eyes, pale lips – but his vision was too clouded to pick out any specifics. It wasn’t until the sigh of relief that he was certain it belonged to a woman.
“You’re awake.”
An automatic attempt to wipe his eyes clear of the goop that obstructed it caused another sharp pain in his side. Kaie remembered teeth there, like the ones on his shoulder, chewing. He blocked the image out as quickly as it came. “Do I have to be?”
His intention was to ask for some herb or medicine that would send him back into the pain-free darkness. Her snort implied she thought he was trying to be funny. Kaie lacked the energy to correct her.
“I’m sorry for the rope.” A cool hand dropped on his forehead. The touch made him flinch, but the chill was too soothing for him to push away. For a moment, Kaie closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation. “You feel out of your cot several times. You were badly hurt, and I was worried you’d make it worse. I can untie you now, if you promise to be still.”
“Okay,” he agreed easily.
She removed her hand from his head, pausing to press the back of it against his cheek for just a moment, then worked on the ropes holding him down. After a moment, he felt them fall away. Kaie took a deep breath of relief, the action causing a fresh twinge of pain in his nose that brought tears to his eyes.
“Easy!” She admonished. “Your nose was broken. You should try to breathe through your mouth for a while.”
“Okay,” he agreed again, a little less enthusiastically this time.
“Would you mind if I take a look at your side? I want to see how it’s healing.”
“Not quickly,” Kaie informed her. When she didn’t move, and he felt her eyes locked on his face, he realized she was still waiting for permission. He almost laughed. She was clearly no stranger to his injuries. No doubt, she treated him while he slept, without his permission even. It seemed absurd that she should need it now. “Yeah, go ahead.”
She made a sound of approval – he thought it was approval – and moved to the left side of the cot. She tugged up his gown carefully. He flinched again, and nearly bolted as his thin protection was pulled away, but the soothing noises she made kept him in place. Aft
er a moment, he felt something peeling up off his side. Kaie strained to get his shoulders up, not wanting to disturb her by moving too much, but curious to see what she was doing to him.
His side was wrapped in a dark brown linen. She was lifting it off him slowly, as if she expected something underneath to jump out. Kaie caught sight of some sort of greenish paste on the underside of the linen and on his skin. Every new bit of exposed flesh brought a sound from her, one she tried to muffle. Kaie wondered if he wasn’t better off not being able to see clearly.
“This is starting to heal,” she murmured. He didn’t miss the hitch in her voice. “I was worried it would turn. Bites do, more often than not. But I think the danger is mostly past. You’ll scar, but I don’t think it will kill you.”
“I guess that’s something.” Kaie would rather she cut the whole thing out of him. He would prefer the gaping hole and risk of death than carrying the marks of the man’s teeth in him for the rest of his life. But he couldn’t explain that to her. She was already wrapping the mess back up.
When that was done, she moved on to his left arm. It was wrapped too, and splinted. He remembered a boot, heavy and covered in dust, pressing down until there was a deafening snap. Then Silvertongue’s hissing laughter as he screamed.
“This is going to be trouble,” the woman said softly. “It wasn’t a clean break. I wanted to amputate, but the Ninth Rit wouldn’t allow it. It’s setting better than I expected, but I don’t know if it will ever be the same. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”
“You’re a healer.” It was a stupid observation, and he felt stupid saying it out loud, but it was the only thing that came to mind to banish the reaction to that news.
She made a scoffing noise as she wrapped his arm up again. “Healers spew nonsense about the moons and auras. They’re inconsistent in their care, at best. I use medicine and science. I’m a doctor.”
“I’ve never met a doctor before.”
She placed a hand on either of his shoulders and pushed him down gently. Panic surged through him. He jerked away from her touch, and nearly shoved her before Kaie came back to himself. “Sorry,” he murmured.