Tangle of Thornes

by Lorel Clayton

  “Watch out!” I said.

  If it weren’t for Gormless’s famous luck, he would have been crippled. Jhenna aimed the blade for his spine. He turned in time to catch the blow on a rib and kept turning, so the blade bounced off bone rather than embedding itself in his chest. He clutched a hand to his bleeding side.

  Jhenna look poised to spin around with another strike. I assumed a two-handed grip and caught her blade against mine.

  I smiled as I saw Gormless raise a massive fist, ready to smash her from behind. The slaver noted my expression and kicked backwards, slamming her heel into the big man’s groin. With a surprised look, he slumped.

  What had happened to Gormless’s luck? It had never failed him before now.

  Harald was whispering more curses, and I realized he was the real problem. Not that Jhenna skewering me wasn’t high on my list of worries, but the mage was very effectively negating my three-to-two advantage. I couldn’t get past the other woman’s swinging blade to reach him, however, so I backed toward Grim.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, hoping Grim had recovered enough to help me out.

  He gave a high-pitched keen and, frightened, I glanced down at him. “I can see the bone,” he said through clenched teeth. That didn’t sound good. It didn’t smell good either, and it was spreading.

  My knowledge of magic was patchy, due to my concerted efforts to stay away from it, but a spell that could rot living flesh fell under the Dead God’s purview. Such practices had been forbidden along with his worship. ‘Forbidden’, meaning the penalty for disobeying the law was decapitation or burning at the stake. Harald wasn’t playing nice, and he wasn’t afraid of the consequences.

  I dodged another swipe of Jhenna’s sword, but my muscles ached. I was tiring, and my backup wasn’t helping. I was in the same prickly situation I’d been in before they arrived, trying to deal with a mage and a master swordswoman.

  I couldn’t afford to look down to be sure of my footing, but I took a big step backward, putting Grim’s prone body between me and Jhenna. She tried to circle around, but Grim finally did something useful and grabbed her ankle. She couldn’t jab at him for fear of opening herself to my attacks, but her footwork was hampered as she tried to pull loose. I came at her in a flurry, expending a last burst of energy to finish things.

  There was a moment when she was off balance, and I was certain I could slip the blade into her throat, but I sensed the nearness of her death and pulled back. I disarmed her instead. Triumphant, I stood there with my blade pointed at her right eye. It was the formal signal demanding surrender.

  She sighed and looked down. I looked down too, because I was on fire. The scroll case wedged in my belt was consumed in an unnatural green flame. More of Harald’s magic.

  I yelped, undid my belt, dropped the pouches on the ground and stamped on them and the scroll case to smother the fire. The canister bounced and rolled across the stone floor, flames swirling around it as it turned. Eventually, it slowed and became a molten heap, before flattening into a shiny puddle of liquefied metal.

  The proof Viktor had gathered against the slavers, what he had died for, was now gone. I glared at Harald. He had a satisfied smile on his face.

  The mage began to weave another spell. I clutched my Ashur and moved toward him. “I’m going to cut off your hands if you try anything else,” I warned.

  “And I’m going to kill you,” Jhenna said. She had retrieved her weapon.

  But she’d surrendered! There were supposed to be rules. I dodged reflexively, and the tip of her blade only grazed my wrist, giving me a deep scratch but leaving my limb intact. I had to stop giving the bad guys ideas.

  I decided on a new tactic, one I should have adopted much sooner, and ran toward the mage, leaping over Gormless, who was now unconscious—I hoped, and not dead—from Harald’s curse. The slaver was unarmed, the Ashur protecting me from his magic, so I pointed my blade at his eye.

  “Give it up, Jhenna, or I’ll do worse than remove his ability to cast spells.”

  My ultimatum might have worked with a reasonable human being. I could cut down her husband before she reached me. She had to capitulate or lose him. Problem was, Jhenna was half-Solhan as well as half-elf. I’d fought my own nature for so long I’d forgotten most of my people did not. They despised weakness and an instant of fear turned quickly to fury.

  “Kill him then,” she said. “I’ll be sending your soul after his, and you can serve as his handmaiden in the Dead God’s realm for all eternity.” Solhan threats could send shivers to your marrow.

  Harald’s wide eyes pleaded for his life, even if his wife wouldn’t, and I knew I couldn’t cut him down in cold blood. Swearing under my breath, I turned to face Jhenna. She came at me steadily, relaxed and confident. She was tougher than me and she knew it. Her blade streaked forward, and I almost didn’t block in time.

  “What are you doing?” Harald said. “You can’t kill her.”

  “She threatened you,” Jhenna answered, never taking her eyes off me.

  “The documents are gone. We can go,” he argued.

  Was the slaver trying to spare my life? After everything I’d learned? It didn’t make sense. Of course, I had no proof of what they’d done, and I’d burnt my bridges with Conrad and the Guard. Come to think of it, I wasn’t much of a threat.

  Jhenna didn’t seem to care. I had awakened her ire. I saw the glint of enjoyment in her cream-colored eyes and knew a thousand arguments wouldn’t convince her to spare me. She craved my death like I’d learned to crave a heavily sweetened cup of kaffe. She would bleed me dry and sigh with satisfaction when she was done.

  “Tell them it was unavoidable,” she said, smiling.

  In the flurry of sharpened iron that followed, I struggled to stay alive for one more second. I was reacting rather than taking the offensive, part of me knew it wasn’t smart, but no coherent thoughts had time to reach my brain. I lived on reflex now. The drills Morgan had made me do twice a day, which had slacked off to once a day, when I remembered, were the only thing keeping my flesh on my bones.

  Those were the same reflexes that allowed me to see the one chink in Jhenna’s guard. She was a great fighter, but she wasn’t perfect. She dropped her elbow occasionally, and right there, visible in the bend between forearm and bicep was her heart. I had parried and was in the right position for once to continue the swing and come up into a lunge. I braced the Ashur’s long handle against my wrist and aimed for the gap in her defense. I pushed with my legs and felt the blade slip underneath her sternum.

  I’d struck on instinct, but the result was the same as if I’d meticulously planned her murder. Jhenna stiffened, and her sword arm dropped. Her eyes bulged with the effort to raise it again, but her body failed her, and she crumpled.

  She stared up at me accusingly before her gaze turned to infinity. I had killed her.

  21│ ALL I NEVER WANTED

  ~

  I WANTED PROOF THE SOLHAN Circle had murdered my brother. That way I could see to it they were punished, lawfully, whether it was by a Highcrowne magistrate or the makeshift council of merchants who ruled the Outskirts. My uncle was an influential force on that council and whatever he willed would be done, so it wasn’t entirely fair, but at least things would have been conducted properly, in a civilized way. I worried about being civilized and good, because I knew my own heart. I knew I was a Thorne.

  Sweet rage coursed through my blood whenever I thought of finding Viktor’s killers and having them under my power, the satisfaction it would bring me. What would be so wrong with doling out justice? It’s what Ulric and Duane did. It’s how they ruled the neighborhood. But, I fought that reasoning.

  At some point, the Thorne name had come to represent everything I hated. Maybe it was the shame I experienced hearing the histories of Solheim as told by others. Only Gypsum and Karolyne had cared to be my friends; everyone else shuddered at my white eyes and easy frown. I liked to think it was something different inside me, the
same thing I had thought present in Viktor, a spark, which told me to fight against my nature. I had always wanted to be like Viktor. I didn’t want power over others; I wanted power over the taint inside me. Solhans embraced that darkness, reveled in it. They saw strength in cruelty, while I saw loss of control. And it was too easy to lose control. Not even Viktor had managed to avoid it in the end.

  It would be so easy to kill for Viktor’s sake, but then something overwhelming would be unleashed. There would be little left that was recognizable as ‘me’. I knew it would happen, which was why I had tried so hard to get proof, to ask others for aid, to keep my blade sheathed. Had that been my first mistake? Unsheathing my blade?

  When I killed Jhenna, I felt her soul brush against mine. I felt the power of it. And I felt the darkness pushing against my insides, felt its triumph. I knew she was guilty. It didn’t matter that my proof had burned in mage fire. She had stolen my brother from me. So, when she exhaled her last, delight coursed over me, and it was difficult to understand why I should feel remorse.

  Why had I feared this? In that instant, I was gone. I was someone else, someone I never wanted to be. If I accepted it, this would be who I was forever. I would finally stop drifting aimlessly, searching for my identity: I would know I was a joyful killer, and I would never fear anyone again or let anything stand in my way.

  The only thing that saved ‘me’ was the knowledge I didn’t intend to kill her. I had not given in. My mind was still mine, even if the instincts of my body and muscles had betrayed me. Those muscles were trained by a Solhan, what else did I expect them to do? It wasn’t my choice. And the darkness receded slightly, enough for me to breathe again and look up from Jhenna’s corpse to see the expression on her husband’s face.

  Harald was calm, pitiless, and he hated me. I didn’t need to see the sheath of her Ashur, which he had picked up, didn’t need to see it descend, didn’t need to feel my skull rattle and blackness envelop my vision, to know he wanted me dead. He did not wrestle with his conscience like I did. He chose to kill me.

  ~

  When I woke, I expected to find myself in the Dead God’s realm. Instead, I lay on a hard bed, crammed between iron-banded chests and scattered pillows. The wooden ceiling was low, and the only light came from a barred window in the wall above me. I was in a slaver’s wagon.

  Jhenna’s body lay next to me on the bed, dressed in flower-patterned silk and glass beads. This cramped space must have been her home, and her husband had returned her to it. But, why was I here?

  The unlit lanterns and decorative circles of stained glass hanging from the roof swayed, rattling like bones. The wagon was moving. A jolt bounced me a few inches into the air, and Jhenna’s arm flopped next to mine. It was cold. How long since she’d died, and why hadn’t she been burned?

  Panic sent me into full alert. I jumped to my feet and tried the door. Of course, it was locked. The wagon was solid wood—walls, floor, roof, everything—and there were no windows except for the tiny one above the bed. It was a secure slave transport converted for private use. How could Jhenna have endured living here? Maybe they still used it for slaves when the other wagons were full?

  I climbed on the bed, trying not to step on the body, and stuck my nose between the narrow bars. There was a single driver holding the reins to a set of oxen.

  “Help!” I shouted.

  Harald looked back at me, and his expression was almost as lifeless as Jhenna’s. He quickly returned his attention to the oxen.

  “You can’t leave me in here with her!”

  “I want you dead,” he said distantly. “I will allow my beloved the pleasure. It’s the last gift I can give her.”

  “This is insane.” No one in their right mind would let him do this. “There’s a dead woman in here!” I called to anyone within earshot.

  Harald closed the shutter. Now, I had no light. I fumbled for my sparker, but my belt was gone. I had dropped it in the textile mill when the scroll case caught fire.

  What had I seen before Harald shut me in darkness?

  I found one of the lanterns and felt my way across shelves, which were lipped to keep items from rolling off, until I reached the fire runestone and a sheaf of dried rushes. All I had to do was think about fire to get the magic to work. Still, my fingers trembled so much it was hard to light the taper. When the lantern was alight and I could see, I exhaled with relief. I had fire. I could burn Jhenna’s corpse.

  Unfortunately, I would burn along with it.

  Harald had left me a choice, knowing I would die either way. I preferred to wait, but not too long.

  Jhenna would rise three days from the moment her heart stopped. She would kill her way to the Dead God’s side, never resting until she reached Solheim, and she would let nothing stand in her way, not barred windows or a stupid, Solhan girl like me.

  I kicked the door, trying to bash it open. It was reinforced from the outside. I heard the metal bar stretched across it clang hollowly each time I struck. My skeleton would break before the door did. I kept at it, desperate. Panting and sweating, I shouted at the shuttered window. “Harald! She’ll kill you too!”

  He didn’t answer. He must know he would die. He was probably counting on it. He’d loved Jhenna a lot more than I’d guessed, and he wanted to join her.

  I was a terrible observer of human nature. I hadn’t guessed they were married, hadn’t guessed he was a mage, and I hadn’t guessed he would plan such an extravagant revenge. Oh, and I hadn’t guessed the wagons leaving town had been only a ploy, so I wouldn’t know they were tracking me. Harald and Jhenna must have hoped all along I would lead them to Viktor’s hidden documents.

  What other information had the scroll case contained? There hadn’t been time to examine all the papers, but, in addition to Viktor’s plea to the Crowns, I’d seen a signed statement from Olaf, a list of people, including soldiers, who had been paid off by the slavers, and several pages written in Solhan I hadn’t deciphered.

  It was my native language, but I’d first learned to read and write elvish, the dominant language in Highcrowne; even dwarves spoke it. There was something about Solheim, I remembered. Was that where we were headed? Was Harald that suicidal? He was keeping a dead woman in the back of his wagon, so he probably was.

  I dug through wooden chests and tore through the junk stowed beneath the bed. When I was done, the place was as trashed as Viktor’s house, but I failed to find any sort of weapon. Harald had cleared the place of anything I might use to break free.

  Once again, I thought of burning, seeing no other way out of this. But it was my last resort. I couldn’t have been unconscious for long. There was still time.

  Exhausted, I sat on the narrow floor, unwilling to lie on the bed next to the body. The fidgets had me up again in no time.

  I banged on the shuttered window to get Harald’s attention and tried not to scream at him this time. “I’m thirsty. I need water and food. Please.”

  If he opened the door to give me supplies, I’d have a chance. Harald ignored me. I pleaded and scratched at the wood like a mewling kitten until my voice went hoarse. No one listened to the pleas of someone locked inside a slaver’s cage.

  Hours later, the wagon stopped, and the window opened. I’d been slumped beneath it, half asleep, and I jerked awake at the sound. “Harald?”

  I saw sky, orange clouds reflecting the sunset, but the sun was behind us, and a break in the mountains lay ahead. We were going east.

  Harald’s face pressed against the bars, surprising me.

  “I’m thirsty,” I said for the millionth time. By now, it was true.

  “Another day is gone,” he said. “You have less than two remaining.” He began to close the window, and I thought furiously.

  “You want to watch her kill me, don’t you? It will be disappointing if I’m weak from starvation or dead from thirst.”

  He thought for a moment then shut the window. I stared at it, waiting for him to come back, wanting more than an
ything to hear the bar on the door pulled aside. Agonizing minutes later, the window opened again, and he splashed a cup of water in my face.

  “I don’t want you dead too soon, but I don’t care how weak you are.” He closed the shutter.

  I darted my tongue out to catch the rivulets running beside my mouth, and then I sucked on the wet patches where my shirt was soaked. I wanted to live as long as I could. The two days he’d given me weren’t enough.

  I don’t know how many more desperate searches I made of the wagon. I found nothing to help me escape or defend myself. Jhenna’s flesh had already grown unnaturally solid, like an eggshell. I could press into it, but the resistance grew with each passing minute. Her skin would continue to harden, and by the time she rose she would be almost impossible to kill.

  It was easy to see why the Dead God was winning. His armies were fed by our deaths, and His creations were unstoppable. If a human corpse was burnt to ashes right away, the curse could be controlled. Once risen, only a mage could destroy it, or a mass of soldiers with sharp swords, but the corpse always took a few soldiers down with it.

  Jhenna wasn’t invulnerable. If I had a weapon, I could dismember her, but I didn’t have my weapon anymore, and I didn’t practice magic. I was tempted at that moment, but I didn’t know any useful spells.

  The Avians, the founders of Highcrowne, had magic enough to keep their borders safe. Human refugees flocked there to take advantage of that protection, but the generosity of the Crowns was growing thin. They had tolerated human settlements within their borders for centuries, and elves relied on human slaves, but the arrival of the Dead God had changed attitudes. While never citizens in this land, humans had been downgraded to an infestation.

  Now, those troublesome refugees living on the streets had been taken away by slavers. Had the Crowns sanctioned it? It would eliminate many problems for them.

  I didn’t think it was true, though. The elves needed us. Besides, the slavers had worried Viktor’s evidence would receive attention from the government, so their activities weren’t approved of. Even if there wasn’t a conspiracy involving the Crowns, something more was going on, I was sure of it, but I couldn’t think very well with Jhenna’s vacant eyes staring at me.