She pulled the bag through the last stretch of graves and into the bushes circling the wall. An hour to dig and bury, less, and she would be gone.
* * *
Sen woke with Daveron close up in his face.
"There's something I feel bound to tell you," the little Moleman said in his usual flat tone.
Sen rubbed his eyes, taking in the soft velour snout and black button eyes of the Moleman, shining even in the darkness. It was still dark in the room, and quiet; he couldn't have slept for more than an hour. Looking into Daveron's face felt unreal, like another thread of the night's long dream; climbing the cathedral, looking out over the city.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It is the Induran. She is fleeing the Abbey as we speak."
Sen pushed himself up in bed. "What?"
"She has stolen several bags of Abbey goods, and now is burying them by the graveyard wall. If you hurry you might stop her, but you must go now."
Sen's mind raced. He'd just finished dealing with Alam, or at least made a start, and now Mare was running as well? He didn't care that she was stealing, but perhaps it would be a problem if she got caught. They'd spike her, for sure, unless she had something worthy to offer them, something like his scars…
He rolled from bed, sleep falling away at once, and tugged on his damp boots and clothes, snatched up his pack then followed the Moleman hurriedly out. Moments later they were padding back across the dew-damp grounds, slipping in and out of shadow. The air smelt wet and fresh. Sen's mind raced with what the Moleman had told him.
"How do you know?" he asked in a whisper.
"Because I followed her. I have followed her every night, because I knew her for a thief."
"What, every night?"
"As I followed you too, Sen. It is part of the work of the Molemen, to move silently and observe. This is my training."
Sen continued down the side of the cathedral, trying to take this new information on board.
"You followed me too?"
"And Alam both," the Moleman went on in his flat tone. "As you climbed the cathedral, as you returned. I do not know how, but you have somehow pacified the threat the Spindle poses. Now you must pacify the Induran, or your efforts will be for naught."
Sen stopped and rubbed his eyes again. "Wait. Just stop. We should tell the Sisters."
"There is no time. The noise they make will set her to flight. It can only be you."
Sen blinked hard. He was right, the Sisters would be loud. If anyone knew their way through the graves to the wall, and could do it silently, it was him. But there was still one thing he needed to know, if he was going to trust the Moleman this far.
Why are you even telling me this? Why should you care?"
"I do not care," said the Moleman. "But your Abbey is paying for my fealty. If the Abbey is destroyed, that payment will end, and my father will be disappointed. I cannot allow that to happen. Now, you have your weapon? We must go."
Sen hefted the trowel from his pack, and together they hurried into the shadow of the cathedral, running silently along the grass verge through the graveyard. When the Moleman pointed out Mare's route to the wall, Sen led them through the graves, picking out a path he'd run a hundred times before. At the edge he plunged into the deep dark of thick brunifer bushes.
The honey smell of resin filled the air. The bushes swayed and settled around him, branches pressing against his sides and face, flexing to make room. He stilled his breathing and strained all his senses. The grounds were silent but still he felt something; the cold clinical sense of the Moleman somewhere nearby, the bitter tang of Mare's thoughts ahead.
He peered through the dark fronds, but saw no sign of the Moleman, melted into the shadow already. He reached forward slowly, carefully parting the boughs ahead, and began to work his way to the wall.
Sister Henderson had warned him about Mare. That thought turned in his mind as he crept forward, barely breathing, the trowel heavy and warm in his palm. He'd been too distracted by Alam's grief to think about anything else, even as the Induran insulted him time after time, showing her contempt.
Now it came to this, the trowel. He had no grave-box to use with Mare. He'd ignored her and that was a mistake. He dropped silently to a crouch, straining to get some sense of her ahead, but the feeling was imprecise, like a vague scent on the wind.
He pressed through a break in the thick leaves, and glimpsed the faint white stone of the wall. Beside it lay a large potato sack, bulging with whatever she'd taken. He took one more step, holding out the trowel before him, and something shot out of the shadows and struck him in the ribs.
Pain burst in his chest and he staggered backward through the foliage, into the solid bulk of a tall grave. The back of his head cracked on the stone and he crumpled down to his knees, as another blow swished down through the leaves toward him. He tried to twist away but it struck him on the upper arm, instantly deadening it. Pain lit up in his shoulder and he caught a glimpse of Mare's sagging face, demonic in a flash of moonlight, before another sharp blow struck the side of his head. He hit the ground on his chest and tasted dirt.
He kicked out but she dropped on his back smoothly, snaked a bark-hard arm around his throat, and squeezed. His breathing halted at once and silver lights flashed in his eyes. He bucked to shake her off but she kicked his arms to the side, pinning him flat and choking him.
Panic filled him. His chest burned and everything started to dim, peppered with images of a dirty, stinking room where children squatted in dark iron cages, all of them moaning and crying, desperate to be saved.
He tried to hit her with the trowel, but couldn't move. He felt the grit of her mind in his like an ironwood vice, and understood that this was where his mother's grand plan ended, choking on dirt in the grounds he knew so well.
"Shh," her voice soothed in his ear.
With the last of his strength Sen drove his elbow back and up into her gut. She grunted, and it gave him leverage enough to twist in her grip, to look up at her half-dead face in the faint moonlight, just as she lifted a glinting silver blade overhead.
"Fool," she spat, and brought the knife down.
* * *
Sen lay on his back, watching the stars revolve above.
The constellation of King Seem spiraled lazily. The wall here was brick, plastered white with Calk lime. The air faintly smelled of ceremonial topaz, and there was a rustling sound nearby. Daveron's face appeared above him, again. Twice in one night. Sen tried to smile, but his face hurt. There was a sharp splintery pain in his side.
"Are you well?" asked the Moleman flatly.
Sen tried to answer, but the pain made his words a grunt. He sat up and felt a weight on his chest squeezing his ribs.
"Don't worry," said the Moleman, his voice clipped and even as ever, "she'll be dead before the fit is up."
Sen rubbed his eyes. He remembered the knife in the flash of moonlight, then darkness. At some point he'd been atop the cathedral. What was that about a fit?
"Where is she?"
"In the bushes, experiencing a spasmic fit," said the Moleman. "I arrived at the prudent moment."
Sen almost laughed at his dry delivery. "Then you saved me. I don't remember."
"You passed out," said the Moleman flatly. Sen saw he was still holding a piece of metal in his hand.
"Is that my trowel?"
The Moleman nodded. "A useful tool. My blow struck her brainpan, throwing her into a fit before her blade could pierce you. You almost died."
Sen nodded numbly. The cold honesty of the Moleman only emphasized the reality of the situation.
"My ribs ache. I think she might have stabbed me."
The little Moleman set the trowel down on the ground and leaned in. "Perhaps I can assist."
Sen felt a trembly numbness descending over him, but nodded. He tried to spread his arms, and a sharp pain shot down his side. "Ah! What was that?"
The little Moleman lifted Sen's tunic and ran soft f
ingertips down his side. "She struck you twice with a blunt weapon," he said as he worked. "A candlestick, I found it nearby. I'm feeling contusions and cracked ribs. Probably you felt your ribs as you stretched. Here."
Sen felt a sharp pain in his left side where the Moleman touched, then a wave of nausea.
"Cracked inward, and a gouge. Your tunic too is ripped." He reached into a black pack at his waist and extracted a strange bell with a rubber ball attached on a length of hose. He held it up before Sen. "This is a bell-pump. You're having trouble breathing, yes?"
Sen nodded. Daveron leaned in and applied the cup end of the bell to Sen's chest, pumped the ball, then pulled it away quickly. He did that several times in quick succession, and each motion brought a little popping sound and a release in the pressure.
"Argh. What does it do?"
"Usually it is used for suckering out eyeballs, but in this instance it is bringing your cracked ribs back into torsion. It's a temporary fix at best, but should get you to the infirmary."
Sen had no time to express disgust, as Daveron's short black arms moved up and down, applying the rubber bell in different locations across his chest, pumping it, plucking it free. The pain diminished, and Sen began to feel a little better. His breathing eased. He became more aware of a strange noise coming from the bushes nearby, a kind of grassy thrashing.
"What's that sound?"
Daveron followed Sen's gaze into the bushes. "I told you. That is the Deadhead, in the throes of her fit."
He craned his neck painfully to see, and now could pick out the shape of Mare's body, kicking wildly in mud.
"A belated gift from the mogrifers," Daveron said. "She has lost all control of her body."
The convulsions were disturbing. Sen watched as her body arched so high it seemed her back would break, then slammed back into the ground.
"Will she be all right?"
"She will die," said the Moleman, as he finished with the bell-pump and sat back on his haunches, a diminutive shadow in the dark. "If not from injuries done during the fit, then from the damage it does directly to her brain."
It took a moment for Sen to understand what he'd said. "Wait, die? Can you help her?"
The Moleman looked at him blankly. "Why would I?"
Sen could think of only one clear reason, beyond the obvious that dying was bad. His mother had named her. But how could he explain that to the Moleman?
"Just do it, please."
The Moleman thought for a moment. "I am to be a usury butcher, Sen. In all things, in business dealings, in matters of debt and flesh, there must be parity. I brought you out here as an agent for my own benefit. I saved you for that same reason. But to save the girl? There is no reason."
Sen's eyes blazed. Of course he'd read all about Molemen, about the transactional nature of their every interaction, how equality was everything as they slit slivers of skin in part-payment of debt. But in this moment, it was infuriating.
"What do you want? What can I give you?"
Daveron's expression didn't change. The tips of his sharp little teeth glinted between his velvety lips. "There is nothing you have that I want. We can only stay and watch the girl die."
Sen tried to get up, but the pain in his ribs dropped him. It made breathing too hard. He couldn't help her himself. He didn't have anything to offer the Moleman. But perhaps there was something he could take away.
"I'll banish you from the Abbey. That is a transaction as yet unpaid for. I'll send you home without your fealty."
Daveron considered this. "I think my work tonight has gone some way toward repaying my presence here."
"So go all the way," Sen panted. "Save the girl, and I'll not mention the transaction again.
Daveron shrugged. "Very well. It will complete any debt to you." He rose and moved to kneel at Mare's side, where he firmly lifted her head into his lap, and pushed his fingers into the sides of her throat. Gradually the violence of her thrashing began to abate.
Sen watched as her body calmed. He didn't know why, but it felt right, like giving the box to Alam. Overhead the sky began to lighten.
Together, with Daveron taking most of both her weight and Sen's, they half-carried, half-dragged her to the infirmary. There one of the Sisters was already on duty. She looked once at Sen and Mare, covered in filth and blood, and raised the alarm at once.
DAVERON I
He'd never saved an Induran before.
Ratfers, yes, Steaplygics, Spindles, those most likely to fall to debt with the dealers of scarab and warrant a visit from the usury butchers, but never a Deadhead, and never to truly save them.
"Bring him back," his father would say, of whomever the latest candidate was, perhaps an Appomatox in his balsa wood shack built out of Levi flotsam, lying on a grime-mired table scattered with broken bottle-shards, strung with scarab-gut drying lines, blood already everywhere.
"Yes, father."
He'd give them a slap, pump their lacerated chest, inject a serum, slit them and reach in to massage their feeble hearts; anything to bring them back so the work could be finished.
A nod from his father was all the reward he'd ever needed. Blood splashed his white tubing, marking him briefly with the stain of their work, marking him step by step toward the red suit his father wore, that of a fealted usury butcher sworn to the King.
And when they revived, the torture could begin again. Beating of the belly, extraction of the eyes, shaving of the skin inside the ear, each tithe specific to the type and degree of debt, and each sliver of flesh ultimately slotted onto his father's ring-spike. Back at the usury yard Daveron would dry the slivers in linseed papers, then slot them into their correct places in the usury books, as accounts with their interest temporarily settled.
The pain of the debtors meant nothing to Daveron, because Molemen felt nothing. The cries of their candidates could be distracting, could sometimes echo in his mind long afterward, but not with any sense of grief or regret.
"Their suffering is necessary, isn't it father?" he'd asked once, when he didn't know any better.
His father had only smiled and ruffled his fur. He hadn't felt it, but took it for the chastisement it was. Molemen did not smile. There was no strength in pretensions toward feeling.
Now he had saved the Induran girl in repayment of a debt, to settle an account, but it did not bring him any sense of satisfaction. Saving lives was not the Moleman way, and it made him uncomfortable. What would his father say, if he knew he'd settled a debt in such a manner?
He lay in the infirmary bed, though he didn't need to be there. The scarred boy was three beds over, the Induran three beds further, and each was surrounded by a bustle of Sisters and activity.
There was nothing to be done for Daveron. He'd insisted as much, as he was unharmed, despite the blood coating him. Still they bade him lie down, and for the sake of simplicity he agreed. It had been a long night's stalking, and so for a time he slept.
He woke in the fullness of day, with light flowing brightly through the airy white infirmary like a Sheckledown tide. There was no sign of the Induran, though the boy Sen lay still in his cot, bandaged and blanketed.
"You were there?"
At Daveron's side sat the Spindle. Alam.
The difference in him was plain; there was something in his face, in the way he carried himself, as if all his accounts had been paid. Daveron had seen it the night before too, when he and Sen had returned from the cathedral. He'd never seen a reversal like it, and it intrigued him.
He sat up on the cot. "I repaid my debt to this Abbey."
The Spindle nodded. "The Sisters say you saved him. I think that puts me in your debt, since I am in his."
Daveron considered pushing that aside. "You should be careful what debts you profess to a Moleman."
Alam just laughed. "Your people already took my father. You can't take much more."
Daveron shuffled up in the bed. "Perhaps you would be surprised at the many degrees of what we can take."
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Alam laughed again. "I know. Yes, I know. But you're not fealted yet, so…" He spread his arms.
Yes, that was true. An unfealted Moleman had no power under the law. It was a long, exhausting, expensive process to wear the red, and a great honor with a great duty at the end; to serve as the strong arm of the King.
But there was no need to discuss that with the Spindle. Other things interested him more.
"You say you owe a debt to the boy. I know that he changed you atop the cathedral. I do not know how, and would like to."
The Spindle shrugged. "He gave my father a grave."
Daveron raised one eyebrow, but opted to let the matter go. Further questions would only show weakness, and to point out his father's body had been burned in the Drazi smokestacks seemed redundant.
"They have taken the Induran," he said, opting for a statement rather than a question.
Alam nodded to the side. "Yes, they moved her up to one of the habitry rooms. Away from Sen. Did he say why he wanted to save her?"
"No. Did he say why he wanted to save you?"
Alam laughed again. Daveron had never had this effect on a person before, and it was disconcerting. He'd not meant to ask another question, even, but it had slipped out.
"Easier than killing me, perhaps?" Alam said.
Daveron thought about that. It didn't seem funny, but then little did. They sat in silence for a while, but for the raspy breathing of the scarred boy.
"He thinks he's meant to raise Saint Ignifer," Alam said. "And we're here to help him. You, me, even Feyon and Mare. Did you know that?"
Daveron considered this and dismissed it. "It's not my affair."
"But do you believe in the Saint?" Alam pressed. "Do you think it's possible?"
The Saint's Rise (Ignifer Cycle Book 1) Page 6