by C. M. Lind
She retched two more times.
“Noooo,” she whined. The juice from the vomit coated her chin and burned her nostrils. “No, no, no, no.” She licked her teeth and then spit onto the floor. “You were supposed to tell me.” She set her hand on his thigh. “You were supposed to tell me. Please tell me. Why didn’t you just tell me?” She shook his leg. “Tell me,” she begged.
She let go. “Tell me the truth!” her voice croaked. “I needed the truth.”
He was never going to tell you the truth.
“But I needed it. He would have told me. I just needed time.”
It does not matter. He’s dead. You’ll never have it.
“No. No.” She whipped the gore from her gloves onto the bed. She winced as the pressure on her hands made them awaken with surging pain.
They’re broken. We gave him what he deserved.
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
We dreamed of his death a thousand times, and now we have delivered it to him. We did what had to be done. He was a traitor.
“Not like this. It was supposed to be different.” She gave up trying to wipe the gore off. “My plan—”
Was beautifully executed. He is dead. Isn’t that what we wanted? Him, dead by our hands?
“Yes. But not like this. It was going to last days.”
Because you wanted the truth? The truth is that you were worth 100 golden petals to him. He did not love you. He was a traitor. That is all the truth we need. He could only feed us more lies. We couldn’t let him hurt us anymore.
“I would have broken him, eventually.”
We couldn’t count on that. He might have escaped. He never would have given you what you wanted, because then there would be no reason to keep him alive.
“I needed to know.”
You don’t.
“My plan would have worked.”
How would you have ended it, then? Let him go?
“Ulrich told me the tale of the High Priest Alain. They say he used to run the temple here a thousand years ago, back when the Mourning Tree was a sapling. Alain knew of Anker’s love for Nox, and he helped hide the affair. Eventually, weighed down by guilt, Alain told Aesa, Anker’s wife, of the lovers’ trysts. Aesa cursed Nox to never be in her presence again, and when Nox set foot into the sunlight, she was burned to ashes. Anker was so distraught that he beat Alain. While Alain was still alive, Anker cut off his cock, slit his belly open, and let the man die in front of his family.”
James is already dead.
“Yes.” She looked at the pulp of his face. The blood and vomit was glistening in the candlelight. “But I find it suiting that a consummate traitor be treated as one.”
Vitoria arose from the bed. Her hands were shaking, and they hurt as they never had before. They were swelling inside her gloves, pushing against the leather like too much sausage in a casing.
She bent over and forced herself to retrieve her goggles and mask. They were too useful to leave behind. She opened her palm, a small groan escaped her mouth, and she tried to close it over the goggles. Her hands wouldn’t close tight, and tears began to flow from her eyes. She bit her lip, opened her hand to a relaxed position, and hooked the band of the goggles with her pinky finger.
Once she fished the goggles she lowered them into her backpack, and then hooked the mask in a similar fashion. All the while she took care not to bump her other fingers, which throbbed and stung.
There was a wash basin in the room. It was a white porcelain thing with more than a few chips and a fine crack near the back. She wanted nothing more than to peel her gloves off and shove her hands into the cool water, but she knew that wouldn’t help. Her hands were so swollen she wouldn’t be able to get the gloves back on. The gloves, she believed, were the only thing keeping her broken hands working.
Carefully, Vitoria linked one arm through the strap of the backpack and leaned to the side to slide it over her shoulder. Then she did the same to the other side, making sure her hands were far away from the heavy bag.
She couldn’t leave James there like that, she decided. An anonymous death that no one but a housekeeper and a few guards would know about didn’t seem fair. She was just an anonymous person that no one cared about, and no one mourned her incarceration. James wouldn’t be so lucky.
After three long breaths she knew what needed to be done. She pulled the knife from her left bracer that she always carried. Her hand could barely grasp the handle of the blade, but she forced herself to close her fingers over it. Tremendous pain shot through her hand and wrist, but she did not cry out. She kept her mouth closed tight, but she couldn’t stifle the tears poured down her face.
It took her a few moments to cut through the binding on James’ left foot. She didn’t falter, nor did she take a break after his foot was free. She forced herself to press on, afraid that she would lose her resolve if given a moment without pain.
She moved onto the other foot. It was the only way to free him from the bed. Her hands were too swollen and weak to untie the heavy ropes and the expert knots. She finished the foot, and then moved onto the hands.
Her face was hot and wet. Even after her knife was returned to its sheath, the pain and tears continued. She picked up her left foot, balancing on her right, and tugged at the sheet that was tightly pulled over the large bed. Her foot pried and pushed until it popped from the corner, receding to a crumpled pile near James’ limp foot. She repeated the process on all the corners of the fitted sheet until it was free.
James was outlined by crumpled blood splattered sheets. The bed he was on was very large, and it could easily and comfortably sleep two. He probably paid more for such a luxury, she surmised, while she had been damned to sleep on a stone floor with a tattered, rough blanket. The idea of James throwing around the 100 petals he traded her for suddenly lessened the pain in her hands. Her face was still hot and slick with tears, but suddenly she didn’t care for all of that. She felt utterly detached from her body. All that remained of Vitoria in that moment was rage, and a relentless drive to do what needed to be done consumed her. Everything else that made her who she was wasn’t with her in that moment.
She grabbed the corners of the sheets with her hands and she pulled them together, effectively creating corpse bindle. To create a rope to pull, she twisted the ends together. She hooked the rope around her arm, and pulled her arm close to her chest.
One pull and James slid off the bed, thumping onto the wooden floor. The blood within oozed onto the sheet surrounding it, and as Vitoria pulled him towards the door, a wet stream of blood followed.
She raised her foot again, but this time it was not to gently manipulate something, it was instead to kick the door. Right above the handle she struck. The door rattled, and it warped with a few cracks. She kicked again, and it popped open. She pulled the bloody bindle with her shoulder. A few doors in the hallway opened a crack to see what was happening, but they quickly shut when they saw the blood smeared and tear stained woman pulling a bloody, dripping parcel behind her.
When she got to the steps she was careful, making sure that James wouldn’t take her down with him in one final act of betrayal. She imagined the corpse tumbling behind her, knocking her down, breaking her legs so she wouldn’t be able to flee from the inn. It seemed suiting that even in death James would find a way to screw her over.
With a thud, he went over the first step, and then with another thud be was down the next. She took it slow, and the thuds reverberated rhythmically throughout the inn. The noise alerted a few more people. She could hear them inside their rooms. Some shouted for her to keep it down, others peeked out their doors to run back inside, a few she heard scuttling behind their doors, unsure what to do at such a strange noise at such a late hour.
The minutes spent dragging James’ corpse felt like an overwhelmingly surreal hallucination.
She pressed on. There was no way people would not see her, and she took no care to hide her face. Those who peeked out, she glared at,
daring them to call out or make a move. She still had her knife in her left bracer and her stiletto in her right, and if anyone tried to stop her, she was more than willing to use them.
She made it to the first floor. James gave a last thud in Iron’s Rest, and they were in the common area. A few people were still up: the last couple drunkards enjoying each other’s company, a front man to rent rooms to latecomers, and, in the back behind the bar, Vitoria could hear bakers and cooks starting their early morning work. The drunks blinked a few times, unable to process the scene before them. The front man looked confused; he looked around, his eyes fervently asking anyone what to do. The cooks and bakers couldn’t see a thing, and their clacking of pots and pans continued along with their chattering.
Vitoria adjusted the sheet hooked around her arm, and then, with a lurch, she pulled James across the room. His arm escaped the bindle and dragged behind them, leaving a smaller divot on top of the large, gory trail.
The front man moved away from his counter closer to Vitoria. She locked eyes with him, and the man froze midstride. She pressed forward a few more paces. She was winded, and the pain that she had fought back before was racking her hands again. They throbbed constantly, with the occasional sharp pain surging through them. All she could do was let out small cries of pain in response.
The man took a few more steps towards Vitoria, putting him close to the front door. She didn’t blink. Instead she stared at him, all while dragging what was left of James behind her.
She stopped when she got to the man. He was in her way. The voice in her head screamed at her. It called for an example to be made of him. She caught her own hand heading towards her bracer, but she somehow stopped herself. “That man,” she nodded to the bindle behind her, “I loved him. You,” she nodded to the man in her way, “I don’t care about at all. What do you think I’d do to you, if that is what I do to those I love?”
The man looked away from Vitoria and went to the door. He opened it for her, and he held it open until she walked through it.
The cool air felt heavenly against her warm face. She pulled James off the steps. The door behind her slammed, and she heard a loud clank as a large bolt was locked into place.
She threw the sheet off of her and James rolled out of the sticky, bloody fabric onto the grimy stone road. Dust and muck stuck to him, and he left a red puddle to replace the missing filth wherever he touched. She walked over to him and kicked him onto his back, exposing his naked front to the sky. With a quick and determined motion she managed to pull the knife from her bracer. She stood over him.
There were lights inside the inn from those she had awoken, but no doubt they were at their windows watching her. She could hear the noise from the bar across the street: laughing, singing, and fighting. Any patrons within could easily see what was happening.
She leaned over with the knife, and, with both hands grabbing the handle, she pressed the sharp blade against his limp manhood resting against his thigh. It hardly took any effort to slice through the soft appendage, and, with one push it detached, plopping to the ground. She then stabbed the knife into his abdomen. With every jolt of pain she imagined James’ voice proclaiming his innocence and declaring his love. She couldn’t stop his voice ringing through her ears, as if he was alive before her still. She dragged the blade from one end of the pelvis to the other, stopping only a few times to steady her grasp on the handle. The scent of shit was released into the air the moment her blade cut the intestines and the colon. She did not care for the pungent smell, and the slice was neither smooth nor elegant.
After she hit the iliac crest opposite from where she started, she stopped, leaving the knife behind. It was nothing special, and she could find a replacement easily.
She stood up and looked around. Faces in windows greeted her, and she did not know if anyone had gone for help. She looked back to James. He was still and dull as he looked up to the stars above with empty, dead eyes.
The stars would quickly disappear when the sun returned within the hour, heralding the first of the morning watches from the guards.
With her foot, she pushed James onto his side. He sprawled over, and the intestines within him began to slip out onto the road. She drew up all the phlegm she had within her and spit. The gelatinous projectile landed on his shoulder and began to ooze down his back.
Vitoria took off down an alley nearby. She swore she heard a bell ring somewhere behind her, but she paid it no mind. Through her haze, she forced herself to careful. The waders she ditched nearby, but she didn’t want to leave her bag anywhere. She took her time with the less taken paths around Queensport, to make sure that no one would spot her.
Instinctively, she returned to Turmont’s Tinctures, and all she could think about was ingesting triple the amount of opiates she would normally take.
Chapter 13
Thoughts of Soli occupied Randolph’s mind for the evening. Over and over again he replayed their encounter from earlier that night. He was sure he was so close. She was leaning in, and he was leaning in. They were inches apart. He could smell the fishy quiche and sweet wine on her breath, and never before had that combination of scents aroused him until that moment with her. All he could think of was that strong scent.
After Ety had ruined everything for Randolph (on purpose, he was sure), Randolph had the food taken away from the parlor. Everything was removed back to the kitchen except for the wine. He took a couple bottles with him to bed, and he left the others for another night. He slept where the other guards did, but he had his own room. His own small, dark, cold quarters that, in that moment, felt smaller, darker, and colder than ever. Straight to his bed he retreated, a strange hybrid of mattress and cot that was musty and stiff.
He turned. He tossed. He sighed. He managed to sleep for a few hours. He was exhausted, but his mind wouldn’t give him peace. What did he do wrong? What could he have done different? Never before did he have to work for the attention of a woman. Randolph thought that his face was nothing special, but women seemed to like his muscle and confidence. But, then again, Soli was different. She had the demeanor of a high born woman mixed with a warrior. She was guarded yet proud; soft spoken yet she possessed a powerful voice.
He shoved the pillow over his face whenever his mind obsessed, much as it was doing in that moment, but it was to no avail. After a fruitless fight with himself, he gave up on getting a proper night of rest. In a short amount of time, it would be dawn, and he decided it was better to be tired for the day than to be deadlocked in bed.
Not many were up at the estate, except for the cooks, the bakers, and the usual guards. Ever since the threat of The Disciples of Nox, Etienne made sure to hire on extra hands. Randolph still thought Ety’s plan was pointless. Most of the men Ety brought in were young, inexperienced, and cheap. Quantity over quality to make the lordlings sleep better at night, Randolph surmised.
Randolph had offered to hire the men himself. He knew of a few mercenaries that could have done the work of a dozen boys, but Etienne made no secret of his disdain for mercenaries—and Randolph, to Etienne, was a consummate mercenary. Randolph was used to people thinking he was stupid, like Etienne insinuated daily, but the fact that Jae didn’t vouch for him hurt more than he liked to admit.
But he couldn’t ever truly fault Jae for anything. Jae gave him something that unscrupulous mercenaries didn’t have: a real chance at a stable life. Jae paid exceedingly well and provided Randolph with excellent gear, lodgings, and board. Randolph had a say in how things worked around the estate, and Jae gave Randolph men underneath him who respected him. All Randolph had to do in turn was the usual security work, and every so often some less than legal things. Jae needed Randolph and Randolph needed Jae. Randolph’s plan was to live out the rest of his days in Queensport working for Jae, and when he was too old to work, take his savings and live on his own. He had always wanted a plot of land to hunt on, and maybe even a few hounds for companionship.
As Randolph wandered around t
he estate that morning, he daydreamed about that plot of land and that litter of puppies. He wondered if Soli liked dogs. Randolph was never up that early, and the people who saw him looked twice to make sure it was really him. He nodded a greeting to all of them, trying to hide his sleepiness. He walked through halls, noting all the imperfections on the walls, the slight stains on the carpets, and the flickering shadows from the candles. The whole place felt odd at such an hour, and it felt like an empty, abandoned shell of a once glorious estate.
He thought about Soli again, and then he cursed himself for his boyish obsession. Was she still there? Did Etienne purposely pull her away right before he could kiss her? Or, how he liked to think of it, before she could kiss him? Again, he cursed himself for his unfounded jealousy. Of course Ety wasn’t sabotaging Randolph. Ety was never known as a man who pursued women, and as far as Randolph knew, Ety had never even courted anyone. Soli was there last night waiting for Etienne—not to be with Randolph, he reminded himself.
Soli was more than likely long gone by such an hour, he told himself. He continued to walk about the estate though, thinking of her. No doubt she had slipped away while he was restlessly asleep. But still, even after all his rationalizations, Randolph didn’t like how Etienne looked at her.
He walked to the front door, and two guards, young fellows he didn’t know that well, stood to attention. Their names escaped him, and he really didn’t care to learn them again. Their eyes were heavy and their manner sluggish. Obviously they weren’t used to working such hours yet. He said hello; they said a very formal hello in return. He asked about their shift; they said nothing was unusual. He told them to carry on, and he turned his back to continue his roving.