Salt, Sand, and Blood

by MarQuese Liddle

  Studying the frozen shutters, Trey wondered if Johan ever settled into the high tower chambers, if a foreigner could be bothered climbing a hundred and fifty narrow stairs every evening. He doubted it, and without a hint of light or smoke from the hearth, it seemed neither could Ariel, nor anyone. Every window and every turret slit hung dark against the tower’s white. Dead and abandoned, the titan’s tombstone silent in the night, mere monument.

  Out of sight, out of mind—they arrived at Aestas parish to their knightly escorts’ glee. Red nosed and cheeked, the chosen men grunted the necessary prayers, all the while stamping the numbness from their feet. No sense of ceremony. Jael’s nostril’s flared. She glared at them, muttering threats under her breath, yet the men had already turned to depart. Another insult to her honour, though in truth they would’ve done the same to anyone. They were the lowest Aestas had to offer, by arrangement: sloven, dull, craven, and lethargic. That fact made their disdain sting all the worse. Trey recalled the frustration—to know you could take them if only duty weren’t in the way. “On the morrow,” he said.

  She leaned into him, her place and oath forgotten. “You promise?”

  Pozchtok called for them to hurry.

  “Come morning you won’t need consent. Until then…” He led her across the threshold, and the portal doors drew fast behind them.

  Inside the vestibule, dark and cold pervaded stronger than without. There was but evanescent moon-glow from frosted windows and a sole hint of kindling smothering in shadow—a lone oil lamp flickering atop the altar residing deep inside the sanctuary ahead. Beside it, shapes of enameled steel glistened with a hue of crimson from folded wool beneath: armour and surcoat. Jael gasped and would’ve made for the altar had Gildmane not kept her.

  “Not yet. I’ve got something I want to show you first.” He looked where he thought the priest might be lurking in the dark. “You’re sure we’re clear, Pozchtok?”

  A wooden clang rang out from the rear—the clangor of a crossbeam sealing the entrance. “What do you southerner’s take me for? A circus showmen?” Between the priest’s words, the scratch of pinions, then sparks and light gave form to the room. He crept from behind them, his soft shoes silent. Pozchtok smiled and said, “Anyone suspicious enough to come check either left with the duchess or are too pious to step foot here until dawn. And you saw the rest of them. Thin-blooded Summerlanders can’t handle the cold.”

  “And the keep?”

  The priest licked his yellow teeth, reseated his forelock. “What about the keep? You suddenly decide the guest cell isn’t good enough for you?”

  “Are the high quarters still being tended?”

  Pozchtok scoffed, “Hell if I know, and Hell if I’m going to stick my neck out if you get caught exploring. Stoltz and me are mostly tolerated, and it doesn’t take ten rich men to send a pair of knives or to get your bloody saint’s attention. ”

  “You won’t stop us, then?”

  “Do what you want. But when they come asking questions, I fell asleep, and you took off on your own.” He retrieved a flask from under his sash, brandy by the aroma, and stared for the sanctuary. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a vigil to watch.”

  At once, Trey went to unfastening his armour, a facile task given the job Johan’s men had done. He’d already removed a vambrace and gauntlet and was working on a pauldron when he felt the tug on his arm.

  Jael’s voice in the darkness. “Trey…”

  He paused, waited for her to talk.

  “I want to stay.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be back in time.” He slipped one arm out of the armour and started on the opposite side. “Would you mind helping me with this? It’s a trick in the dark.”

  Wet footsteps distanced themselves from the captain. “I said I want to stay. I know it’s just a formality, but it’s something you’ve all done—the knights, I mean. I want to feel that I’m the same as the rest of you.”

  “It’ll be fine. You heard Pozchtok; no one will know the difference so long as we’re back before morning.”

  “I’ll know,” she said, and her words hung between them like an icy veil.

  Gildmane freed his other arm and moved on to his cuirass, then his cuisses, his greaves and sabatons, till there were no more straps to be undone, no more noise to fill the void. And in the quiet he realized he’d lived this before, standing blind and vulnerable the night of his own vigil.

  It was a bitter, bleeding memory: hours blurred together within the walls of Temple Rock’s great sanctuary. Mathew Gardner had observed in Acker’s place, and a vicar witnessed for the newly anointed saint. Paul had been too busy, they’d explained to him, to be bothered with the traditions that he loved so dearly—like a lord loves his children. In name only, dawn had relieved Trey of his miserable watch. He’d taken his leave at once, intent on grieving by himself beneath the lodge; but before his feet could chance trample the earth, a second rise seized him at the Temple doors. He’d been waiting outside, the new bishop of faith. Prophet Ba’al. His question shot straight through Trey’s breastplate. “Doesn’t satisfy, does it, to play the part of the hero? No…not when it’s you who’s become one already.”

  The present veil parted, and the captain spoke to Leonhardt how the bishop had spoken to him. “I understand how you feel, Jael. I felt the same, and that’s how I know this won’t give you want you want. It can’t because you already have it. Everything I said about you in the great hall, all those accomplishments, they’ve made you the knight you’ve longed to be. A true knight, chivalrous and valiant. The rest is just superstitious ritual, a tale we tell to the rest of the world. It’s pretend.”

  “Why won’t you listen? I don’t care about the rest of the world. I don’t care if it’s pretend. I want to stay for me. And I want you to stay with me.”

  “And I want the same,” he said and groped through shadow till he found her hand splayed against a wall. He took it in his. Starting off to his left, he continued, “Come with me. It’s this way, just beyond the belfry and—”

  She snatched her hand back, damp footsteps faltering. “Listen to me, dammit! I said I’m staying!”

  At the end of the sanctuary, between the dim oil lamp and Pozchtok’s lantern, the priest’s shadow coiled and uncoiled again. He was watching them, and his attention pricked Trey with a shame like an itch—impossible to ignore and growing more in the attempt. It dulled his thoughts, slowed his responses.

  A grating pause.

  Jael whimpered in the interval, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell, I just—this is something I have to do, alone if I must…” she sniveled, “but I’d rather to do it together, with you.”

  “I know you didn’t mean it. You’ve had too much to drink, is all. Why don’t you lie down for a while? I had Pozchtok prepare a room.”

  “God,” she cried, her voice tremoring like rain, “Why won’t you listen to me?”

  A crackle of laughter emanated from the priest, and Trey thought his teeth might shatter from the clenching. His words escaped, singed and gnarled, “I am listening! I’m the only one who’s listened! How do you think you got here but for me giving you the chance? Who do you think it was that arranged for this damned ceremony?”

  “Then why are you trying to take it away from me?”

  Her footfalls faded in the darkness, echoed against the sanctuary walls. Gildmane tried to follow but tripped on a piece of discarded armour. The floor came up fast: hard, cold granite. Pozchtok laughed, and Jael’s shadow cast from the lamp atop the alter. Trey could hear her crying between the priest’s gasps. It tore him apart, yet still he had to decide which path to take—which half of himself he would leave behind—who was it that was the fake: The knight? The bishop?

  Who am I? he might have asked, but instead the captain dragged himself to his feet and abandoned his charge. With no light to guide his way, he proceeded through a maze of corridors and stairways, gray-black switchbacks with portals locked to bar his way, alc
oves and side passages, until the church bell hailed from its frozen seat, jade green, inundated with moon glow. Onward and upward, he entered the dim well and by iron rungs ascended out the mouth of the belfry, onto the snowy roof pitched mountain steep, and slid like a child sleds to where the buttresses joined the parish and keep. His brother had gone this way before him—brave Elliot, their mother’s favorite, unafraid of the shadows cast by the duke and his heir. He would have made a true Aestas knight had he lived. But he hadn’t, just as he failed to ascend to his father’s chambers. He never even made it into the keep. Trey had spotted him sneaking across the parish roof the night of his attempt and threatened to betray him to their father. It was envy and cowardice that made him a traitor. It’s what brought him to the Cross at twelve years old and now to the window of his late brother’s chamber. Same old shutters as they were before. The servants never noticed that Elliot left them unlatched, and so they had remained the last decade. Trey pried them open, ice tearing away the paint from the wood.

  Inside was silence and vacancy. The door hung ajar as far as Gildmane could see, and beyond that, darkness. No lamps, No candles. The fifth floor had been abandoned, it seemed to the captain, and he began to worry that the duke’s chamber had been purged, that nothing would be left but an empty garret. Yet it was too late to turn back. He had to see for himself, and so he opened Elliot’s chamber hoping to illuminate to the corridor with dim moonlight. The tower portal stood opposite his brother’s door. He left that one wide as well, spellbound by the hundred and fifty stairs spiraling into the abyss.

  It was a long climb. Trey’s thighs were burning and his calves cramping by the time he reached the top-most stair. And that was it, no platform nor landing but mere inches of oak trimmed in iron red. The blood pumped hot into his limbs from his chest. Numb toes and fingers both curled as he grasped the rusted door ring. Like an icicle’s stab, as if the flaking metal might crumble into handfuls of dust, he leapt back from it, frightened, then laughed until he found that his legs were frozen, his doublet damp, cold sweat running down the back of his neck. “Don’t be craven,” he said, “you’re not a boy anymore. No one’s left to punish you.” He coaxed a leg forward, then another, then a hand.

  Gently, the door opened, hinges whined, and Trey squinted for strips of gray light in the black room. There were two, each opposite the other at his left and right, windows shuttered and iced over. He chose one and plunged into the dark and at once was met with obstacles. So he tried for the other to much the same. Back and forth he went, banging his shins, tripping and stumbling, cursing the dark. Then at last he arrived at the window, though he knew not which one that he groped, nor did he care. His fingers had found the latch—his palm, the shutter. He shoved hard, and the din was like that of shattering glass, but the knight doubted anyone could hear over the wind’s howling. It made Trey shiver, not the chill but the sound like a thousand-thousand souls wailing in the black flames of Hell.

  But there were no souls outside that window, only the white roofs and yards below, the battlements all covered, and so too the hills and fields and the edge of town just outside the castle. Nothing moved but for the clouds that fringed the moon. It’s silver light stole into the room, and the glint of glass caught his eye. On a small table near the window rested a lantern with a candle inside, and beside it, a striker. Trey closed the shutters, then went to work with the old, iron tool. It took several tries to get the wick to ignite, but when finally it did, the room came alive where the tiny light touched. But perhaps dead things were better not brought back to life, Gildmane thought, looking on the rotting furniture: a moth-eaten mattress; warped wardrobe; chairs by the hearth who cushions there was little left; decaying firewood; and a dusty writing desk, its cover closed. Trey opened it, curious, but nothing had been left inside—not that he knew what he was hoping to find, yet he sighed, regardless. Why did I come all this way? Why did I say such stupid things to Jael? He pounded a fist onto the desk. The whole structure shook, but he couldn’t feel the impact, so cold were his knuckles. So again he struck. And again. And again. I’m such an idiot! I could’ve ruined everything coming here. And for what? He raised his fist, wet and steaming, and was about to bring it down when a foot step echoed from the stairs—at the threshold.

  “What are you doing?” whispered Leonhardt. She closed the door behind her.

  Trey stayed facing the desk, away from her, his bloody hand held hidden. “So, you decided to come after all.”

  “I told you, I wanted us to do it together. What chamber is this?”

  “The duke’s chambers,” he said. “How did you find me?”

  Jael’s boots tapped softly on the floor, exploring. “You told me where you were going, and there were footprints on the roof, doors left open, noise on the stairs. I was worried someone else might hear.”

  “You could scream up here and no one would hear you. My father used to invite my oldest brother for counseling. I used to try and listen from the door downstairs when I was a boy, but all I could ever hear was the guard yawning on the other side.”

  “That’s right,” she said, her feet stopping at the foot of the bed. She sat, and the decrepit mattress gave a dying wheeze. “It’s easy to forget that you’re the son of a duke. In the Enclave, they’d call you a prince. At least, I think that’s what Sarah told me.”

  “Who?”

  “Sarah Purwynn, the one who joined with the Sisters; I swear I’ve mentioned her before.”

  Trey shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Leonhardt. She fell back on the bed and it gave another gasp, it’s ancient frame creaking as she shifted side to side. “This is what you wanted to show me, then? Your father’s chambers?”

  “Yeah…”

  “What happened?”

  “Stoltz didn’t feel like climbing the stairs.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Jael pushed herself upright. “What happened to your family?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Gildmane asked, staring down at his bloodied knuckles. He extended his fingers then clenched them again The silence dragged on longer than he expected. Was she waiting for him, he wondered after a time and said, “It was sickness, just like everyone said: the duke, my mother, and all their children, dead before the autumn leaves had fallen from the trees.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That was a long time ago. I can hardly remember their faces.” He stretched his hand a few more times. The pain was faint now, the bleeding stanched.

  “What were their names?”

  “My mother was Elanna, and my older brothers were Elliot and Troy—the latter named after the duke, if you couldn’t tell.”

  “Him and a hundred others and my father’s horse,” Jael mused.

  Trey turned, curious at her mirth, but she was too engrossed in the vaulted rafters to return his look. She was after something, the wryness on her face telling him to wait for whatever bit of wit was being concocted. And so he did, but it didn’t take long for his attention to wander. Jael had donned her new surcoat, he noticed, crimson like her old one, the same snarling lion embroidered at the front—though now its jaws gnawed a Messaii cross. A better fit than her father’s, he thought. Even with excess cloth to fit over her armour, so long as she sat as she did just then, with her arms propped behind her, the sigil lay smooth, the waist cut in and the skirt flared where her hips rested on the withered mattress. She seemed like a djinn, or like a mermaid, her legs crossed, black hose half vanished in the dark.

  “So what now, Captain?”

  His gaze flew to her face—intent and impish.

  She cocked her head toward the door. “Shall we start back?”

  “Not yet,” Trey answered. “There’s something else.”

  “Something else you want to talk about?”

  He lifted the lantern from the desk, opened its glass cage. “No,” he said then blew the candle out.

  Small breaths. Darkn
ess.

  He heard her shiver, whispered as she said, “There was something else you wanted to show me.”

  Small breaths. Footsteps.

  “Yes.”

  Twenty-Third Verse

  Adam did not dream. There was no time for his mind to sink into sleep before the Tsaazaari sands began their shaking. But the pastor's son wasn’t the first to wake. His bleary eyes opened, amazed at the shadows that leapt about the flames like a troupe of demons dancing to the braying of camels and to the apostles’ shouts and the low, baleful howl from the darkness without their shrinking bonfire. Then the light went out. It wasn’t until morning that he learned the shadows were only one man—yours truly, Kashim; for the rest of Jordan’s band were fitting their mounts as fast as hands could manage. They’d needed every second they could get—at least that’s what Zachariah said when dawn broke the following morning. Jordan, Ba’al, and Lilum agreed: they would keep moving, put as much distance between themselves and the Black Beast as a day’s ride could provide, lest they waste my human sacrifice—a story for another time.

  That was weeks ago. Now lo and behold, the Messiah, the bishop, and the Mother of old Iisah with their entire company escaped safe into the Tsaazaari. North and west and west they went, skirting the head hunters of Najmah Janoob and Najmah Shamal, the northern trading post where their bounties had spread. Yet they passed through there too without a drop of blood shed. There had been much levity, then. Jordan and the apostles gave praise to God for rewarding their friend’s sacrifice, Ba’al and Adnihilo to fortune, and Lilum to the Father in whose protection she claimed she’d never lost faith. Adam had sided with her during the celebration, and in the conversations that followed as well. It was to convince himself as much as the others, for in his heart he harbored secret doubts about these promises and prophecies, whether or not anyone truly believed. The bishop, certainly not—but the Mother? Something had been strange in her demeanor those days after their escape. She’d seemed almost sullen at times, more lost in thought than her previous confidence betrayed.