“No! No. no,” she chanted.
Fuck.
I closed my eyes and walked toward the door. The heavy chains of the condemned were right there on the peg. I hadn’t used them in three years. A fact I was proud of. I would someday outlaw capital punishment. I made it my business to do so the day I watched Lisette melt away to nothing in that clear tropical blue water. It took a decade to climb this high… but here I was. If one could call what I did a high position.
There really wasn’t a great deal of glory in extraction… not unless it was the obviously guilty. Those were fun to play with, if the charges were warranted. This one, she was just a means to an end. A tool. Her current situation revealed just exactly who stood in her favor when it was all said and done. No one. Not Nayana, House Rocham, or Lazarus’ sorry ass.
“What are you doing? No. Get away.” Tamara did her best to kick at me, but her restraints were well thought. “Stop. You can’t! You can’t throw me in there. You can’t!”
“Your silence said you’re a traitor. If you’re a traitor, you have to swim,” I assisted her reasoning while taking up the strings that decorated the bodice of her gown.
“No!” she screamed, kneeing me and tossing herself about. I left her to it, and she shook her own ties loose. The moment of truth came when I grabbed her shoulders and shoved the material off them.
“I’m not a traitor! I’m not a traitor! I loved him. I love him still. Lazarus will be here, you must give him time to arrive!” Tamara sobbed.
“Good. Very good.” I sighed, personally relieved she had caved. “I’m pardoning you from Lake Last. And I shall be even kinder by not branding your face.”
I returned the chains to the wall and took the branding iron from its place beside the poker.
“Why the fuck would you brand her?” Chalice exclaimed, her knuckles were white where they wrapped around the cage.
“Atticus and Nayana will not see this without consequence. They both want her dead. The best mercy I can give her is no death and a brand. If I place it to her face… how will she find work? Her children will be shamed. I’m going to place it where it will only be seen by those it concerns. It will give her half a chance when she is exiled.”
The chains began to rattle behind me.
Chalice slid down the length of the cage, her fingers catching on each bar as she went. “You’re not serious?” she whispered, before her eyes saw what I had placed over the flame. “Messiah you can’t burn that woman! Messiah!”
Tamara began to squirm and scream, she tossed herself left and right, but only had about six inches in either direction to go.
Chalice
“The law says women are branded on the face. It is the easiest to get to when they fight. I am willing to not disgrace you for life… but I can only do it… if you consent…” He tipped his head and studied her bodice in a way that made my stomach sour.
“Stop it! Stop Messiah, what if she has kids to nurse?” He didn’t answer me, but the woman in the chains stilled and shrunk back against the wall.
“Face or hidden?” Messiah repeated, stepping closer toward her. His hand came out to her throat, and she screamed out in her panic.
“Hidden!”
My hand flew to my mouth, and I clamped my eyes shut. I swallowed violently against the sound of the irons hiss and Lady Tamara’s piercing screams. I didn’t want to look… but I was surprised when I did. His balancing hand had dropped to her sternum and his iron was flush against her upper arm.
Tears trickled down my face. Was it relief? Horror? Empathy? I was so fucked up I didn’t know. I had truly expected him to burn her chest, so I felt a sense of gratefulness toward him for settling with an arm, which only made me more disgusted with myself and the whole damn situation.
Once the woman composed herself, Messiah helped her from the device and arranged an escort to take her back to her husband.
So why was I still in the cage?
He came back inside the shack of a jail a few minutes later with bread and a bit of wine. I started to panic again, when he handed it through the bars rather than letting me out.
“Messiah…” I whispered, hesitantly reaching for the bread.
“Hm?” he mumbled, giving the wine a bit of a tilt. I took it from him before it had a chance to spill and quickly spoke up.
“Why am I still in a cage.”
“Because it is the only way I can get you to sit still and listen. I needed you to see. To understand,” he mused without malice.
He took his time eating his chunk of bread and sipping his wine. It wasn’t even good, but he put on a show. No one sipped peasant wine that slowly.
Damn him!
“Are you going to burn me, too?” I quietly asked.
He glanced up without bothering to raise his head and shrugged idly, “I don’t want to. But what I want and how difficult you ladies make it, is always two different matters entirely.”
I threw the bread on the cot and grabbed the bar while I sipped. “What does that even mean…”
“It means I don’t want to brand you, so stop trying to make me.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t, I stared at him until he continued.
“Atticus has his heart set on that woman’s position. She will meet her end one way or another, but it will not be through the abuse of my power.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself?” I asked, before thinking the better of it.
“It is the truth, he was already drawing contracts with Nayana’s son.”
“Contracts for what?” I stamped my hand on the bars, quickly growing frustrated.
“For you. Contracts for you to be unioned off. To be the Princess of Rochambeau, so to speak.” he exclaimed, with irritation and impatience. “You have to think—” he said while fumbling with keys and opening the cage door— “five steps ahead of Atticus or you will end up six feet below him.”
I slowly made my way out of the door he held open.
“Chalice,” he whispered, grabbing my upper arm and forcing me to face him. “Do not allow Atticus to think less of you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Learning the Trade
Messiah
I watched her go, unable to prevent myself from worrying over her, even after such an extreme lesson. She couldn’t comprehend. Not the way I needed her to. None of them ever did, not until they were cornered. I swallowed hard and forced myself to look away when she met Ender at the ramp.
It was foolish, but sometimes when Chalice stood in the distance, I pretended she was Lisette. They were so strikingly familiar, it was astounding. While my secret game eased my grief a bit in the short term, I had found as time went on now, that I no longer recalled the sound of Lisette’s voice. In my dreams, it was now Chalice that called to me.
By the time I straightened up the office and found my way home, daylight was threatening. I climbed the stairs even though my legs felt like they were made of led and somehow managed to shrug my way out of my cloak. There was no way in this world or the next that I was going to crawl through the Villa to my chambers. The library! No one reads at such an hour. Surely.
Before I could prove myself right, or wrong, Atticus cleared his throat so harshly it made me reach my sword. A quick glance brought my attention not to him, but to a body on the floor behind him.
“En…” I gasped, rushing past Atticus.
It was exactly what he wanted. He shut the door behind me and left me to discover that it was Demetri, not his twin on the floor. Ender sat rigid near the hearth, his eyes fixed on his brother, his face pale save the redness around his eyes.
As I drew near Demetri’s slumped form, I could hear the deep high-pitched sound of an injured lung. He wore no shirt, the indented blue and black area on his ribs betrayed his problem to anyone who glanced his way.
“You have to let Ender fix him, Father.” I closed my eyes and willed my voice to remain low and respectful. His was an ego made of glass, one
wrong step and he would kill Demetri just to prove he could.
“Hmm. I have to? The only thing I have to do is die someday. We all have to do that… looks like he’s doing it a little quicker than the rest of us,” Atticus answered, just as smoothly.
Why?
The question screamed on repeat in my mind, but I knew better than to trust myself in saying it. It would carry too much of what I was desperately trying to swallow back. My pinky twitched, betraying the nerves and energy I was tingling with. I slowly curled my hand into a fist and pretended to feel for a hangnail while casting a brief glance toward Ender.
“Whatever was the reason for such a violation? Something perhaps we all should take to heart?”
He was drinking before the sun rose, so it was safe to assume he had been up all night. The possibility that this was anything other than pay back for last night’s fiasco was slim to none. But why was Demetri the one suffering? I arrived at the answer a moment before Atticus gave it. The reality landing so heavily I scoffed on a laugh.
“I wanted him to know what it felt like. To be forced to stand by and watch while everything you worked for is fucked up right before his eyes,” Atticus casually explained, without taking his eye off Ender.
“Atticus…” Uncle Icarus called from the doorway. “Let them tend to him. We must speak.”
“We can speak later.” Atticus waved him off, then turned to me. “I had her set, Messiah. Set!” His face was so close to mine I could taste the Cognac on his breath. “She was to be the Princess of Rochambeau… Now what?”
Veins surfaced across his forehead and his jaw clenched so tightly I just knew he was going to punch me.
“She has no use to me now. None,” he fumed.
“Stop having a tantrum because you can’t fuck her,” Isabella’s voice cut through us all. Even Demetri on the floor froze with a grimace.
“She’s proving to be a quick learner in some of the finer arts,” I quietly offered.
“Oh… “Isabella glanced toward me, lent her weight against mine, and whispered in my ear. “She has talents even you couldn’t dream of.”
Her eyes rolled up and down me while Atticus bristled. She laughed playfully and patted my chest. “Fine, tell me what you would have her for, Messiah?”
“She has taken an interest in teaching herself to shadow walk, and I’ve been tutoring her in extraction.” While we spoke, Ender’s eyes followed the volley of opinions, but he remained stiff and mere paces away from his twin.
The door squeaked ever so subtly, alerting us all to Uncle Icarus’ presence, still in the doorway. Though he was younger than Atticus, his hair had already turned into a distinguished grey. His blue eyes were always shifting with dishonesty, but they lacked the cold callousness that Atticus boasted. At the moment, he was fixated on Demetri who was now in the fetal position and half unconscious.
“You cannot risk him right now, Atticus. He is your advocate. Let the boy find treatment,” Icarus suggested again without meeting his brother’s gaze.
Rather than the explosive scene I had been met with, Atticus merely nodded.
“See to him, Ender, Messiah.” Isabella bid, finally peeling herself away from me and Icarus.
Seeing to him was one thing, getting him to the surgery, another matter entirely. Even trying to slide our hands beneath his body to lift was met with violent groaning and hissing.
“Leave. Me.” Demetri begged in a raspy tone. His respirations had taken on a wet sound and his color had waned drastically since I first laid eyes on him.
“It’s going to be ugly no matter how it happens, and I’m not sure how much time he has, you’re the surgeon… but he’s fucking gurgling.” I pointed out to Ender. “Run ahead and prepare your surgery.”
I didn’t wait for his answer. Part of me was terrified Isabella would leave and take Atticus’ show of mercy with her. I scooped, grappled, and hefted Demetri over my shoulder. His hands clawed and grabbed at my shoulders. He howled loudly and pitifully, but after the heft to my shoulder he was out again.
I carried him through the mountain’s hidden route, arriving unseen at the surgery. Ender already had the fire going and his utensils boiling over it. The table was prepped with fresh white linen, and everything smelled of the cleaning liquor.
“On the table with him, then?” I clarified, already on the move. A single nod of the head was all I received in response. Ender was so lost in drawing something into a syringe that he didn’t even bother looking back.
Ender
Some people say that the Fated Few have two places for evildoers. One is a place of sorrow. The other a place of torment for the truly profane. If you asked my brother, he would tell you I stole him from one, just to deliver us to another. I never understood what he meant, until I watched Atticus push the brass rings of destruction over his knuckles and turn them on my twin. The man I had idolized and aspired to someday be had kicked down the last of illusions and finally left me no choice but to acknowledge the monster beneath the mask.
He wasn’t a protector. He’d never gave a fuck about family. He was the simplest of creatures, ruled by self-indulgence and grandiose illusions that he would kill to keep.
Every moment of our tangled, torturous existence flashed before me. I could feel Demetri’s tears pouring over my arm, when they took our mother away. She was purchased and shipped to her new master right before our eyes. We were six then. I didn’t know it at the time, but she had been sold as a preventative measure.
It took over a decade for me to realize how calculated the slave house master was. Her sale was quickly followed by ours. We moved all of two blocks, but it might as well have been continents.
Demetri wheezed, ripping me back to the present for a moment. I moved on impulse alone, my mind still slipping back and forth to our harrowing journey. I couldn’t let it end like this. Not after everything. I’d spent my life trying and failing to prove Demetri wrong.
Fated Few, let this be the first time I found success.
I located the area beneath his broken rib and sought my instrument of choice. The flash of the scalpel took me roaring back. Literally, the sound of my own pulse roaring like the angry waves of the ocean against my eardrum.
I’d seen the overseers and those considering her purchase sliding into the side rooms with my mother. We had all heard the sounds of the newly arrived women being welcomed in properly over the years. But until it happened to me, I never thought that was something I had to worry about. Once we moved into the proprietor’s private address, he visited me nightly in the room I shared with Demetri.
He’d lay there as still as he is now, trying not to draw attention to himself while I was being hurt. When the dawn came, he blamed me for drawing the master’s eye and blamed me for killing the man, leaving us exposed and homeless. He blamed me for catching Atticus’ eye. He hadn’t said it, but I knew from the way he looked at me while he was spitting up blood, it was me he blamed.
Determination and the anxiety of it all caused my hands to shake. Messiah gave my shoulders a squeeze and laid his forehead in the center of them.
“You are the best surgeon south of the Inlet. If he has a chance, it’s with you,” Messiah whispered.
“And if I save him, only for him to find his end because of me, in some other way…?” I whispered, somehow finding the ability to work now that a distraction had been laid.
“There is no such thing as coincidence, Ender.” He sighed, pulling up a seat beside me. After a moment, he thought better of it and moved the stool to the opposite side of the table. “Everything in this life happens for a reason. Like those puzzles from the Forest people, the pieces fit together perfectly to form a much bigger picture. That is how our life is, and then the piece that is you fits with the piece that is me, which touches so many lives, just as yours does. So on and so on.”
Messiah’s voice could charm a crowd. It captivated me until Demetri was just another patient. Another body with a set of ribs and lungs.
He knew without asking, just how much Nirvana Root to squirt on the rag and how long to hold it over the patient’s mouth.
That’s it. The patient. Just another patient. Fuck the fact that I was operating on an exact replica of myself. That the fate of my only known living relative literally lay in my hands.
Demetri groaned, and his head shifted toward Messiah. The rag was over his mouth before I could speak, and his head guided back into my prescribed position. I was getting into the thick of things. I needed to remove the displaced and damaged tissue of his lung and sew it shut.
The study of medicine had brought us far, but we still had a way to go. Nirvana Root was good for a quick tooth extraction, but I was dealing with his internal organs. This was no fifteen-minute procedure. The shakiness began again, and I started to feel anxious. Not just on edge, but an energy that vibrated inside of me, refusing to let me work out the nerves.
I couldn’t help it, despite my efforts to push forward, my eyes kept travelling to the narcotic soaked rag. At first Messiah didn’t notice, but after a while, he assumed I was concerned over Demetri. He held the rag over my twin’s lips until his chest scarcely moved at all.
“I don’t think I can give him much more, Ender…” he announced, catching my gaze drifting that way again. I averted my eyes at a speed that only guilt can inspire and was rewarded with the sharp intake of his breath. “Maybe… after you’ve finished, I could buy you a drink?”
“He doesn’t want a drink.” Chalice mused, her spiked slippers clicked over the tile floor, and she walked past me, draping her fingers against the back of my neck as she did so. Her hand settled atop Messiah’s before sliding the rag from beneath his palm and bringing it up to my face.
She pressed and removed it from my lips like a stolen kiss, leaving Messiah to stare. It was that look that could have made the Mountain itself quake. A silent ‘what the fuck’ that might as well have been bellowed.
Chasing the Night (The Krypt Series Book 1) Page 14