“Say naught a word, Pidgeon,” the doll ordered. “And is that any way to speak to a decorated knight?” Lucas’s doll-eyes narrowed in anger.
The doll’s life-like actions, when sapping Aarez’s life-force, still sent shivers down Cleo’s spine. She remembered touching the doll and feeling skin and bones beneath her fingers. It took all her concentration to remember that Lucas was no more than a doll on borrowed life.
“I’ve had people’s heads for saying less,” he said, flexing his small arms so the muscles underneath strained against the silk of his shirt. As if knowing that his existence brought discomfort, the doll smiled wide, his teeth an uncanny hue of white. “Of course, I’d be willing to overlook this blunder if you were to…” The doll rubbed his tiny fingers together and licked his lips as though he were starved.
Cleo lunged forward, seizing Lucas with both hands. As she tugged, her nails dug into his jaw and cheek. She felt moisture under her grasp. The doll bled. At her touch, Sir Lucas screamed at such a high pitch that it sounded feral. Cleo felt the resistance against her pull dwindle. She stumbled back with the doll in her grasp, trickles of blood spotting on the poncho. The moment before the last stitch of Lucas’s body lost contact with Pidgeon’s hand, the husk of Aarez sent his spare fist hurdling straight into her left eye.
◆◆◆
Cleo didn’t remember lying down. Waking from her daze, she picked her throbbing head off the cool floor. Through one eye, she saw Kiren stooping over her, pity and pain clear in her expression. Neither Aarez, nor Sir Lucas were present.
“He’s got a strong punch,” Cleo finally said, forcing a dry laugh out. “How bad is it?”
“You won’t be wooing any boys for a while,” Kiren said. “Though with only Aarez in here, I don’t think you need to worry.”
Cleo felt a smile touch her lips, then winced at the pain it elicited.
Kiren adopted a serious face. “Cleo, I didn’t know. I asked him about it, because of what we shared, but I wasn’t expecting this,” she said, gesturing to the disarray in the room.
“You can’t blame him. I don’t,” Cleo said. “Lucas is both a curse for him, and his sustenance. He survived on his own with that doll for many years. It’s harder for him to give it up than it is for some to give up the drink. He isn’t in control. Not with Lucas.”
“Pidgeon?”
“That’s who Aarez becomes when he puts his life into the doll. A corpse-like version of himself.”
“You must be a saint to not blame him after what he just did to you.”
“No, I can empathize with the loss of control though. Being an echoer myself.”
“Oh,” Kiren said. She seemed to look over Cleo with a concerned expression. “And you still think that you don’t have any stories worth recording?”
◆◆◆
The heavy footfalls of incoming traffic roused Ren from his light sleep. He sat up and listened at his door as people approached, voices carrying down into the dungeon.
“I don’t like this. It could kill him just as well as if the blade were severing his head. What of infection? Or blood loss? He’ll have to learn to eat, and who knows if he’ll be able to talk.”
“That is the point, Skuddy. That’s exactly the point.”
Ren recognized Dorothea’s voice. He peered out his cell door’s tiny window as the footsteps neared. A pale, unflickering light grew brighter, the constant glow reminding Ren of the lights in the king’s audience chamber.
Peering across the corridor, Ren thought he could see Gnochi’s ghost staring back at him with eyes so brown they might have been black. He thought of the last words that the ghost had said to him, shortly after the guard left: ‘You’re just going to let them take your voice? Tell you when you can and cannot speak? Why not just kill yourself and save them the time?’
Light exploded in the corridor, blinding Ren, whose eyes were comfortably acclimated to the inky darkness. As they adjusted, he made out the features of Gnochi’s face. A thick beam of light stemming from something unknown, overhead, heralded the entrance of five guards. They shared the weight of a door-shaped object with enough leather straps to batten down gear to the deck of a sea-faring ship.
Two more men emerged into the now lit corridor. Ren recognized the first immediately, as the voice had betrayed. Dorothea descended into the dungeon. He wore white, clothing more befitting a servant than a king.
He realized that the last man to enter the corridor, immediately following Dorothea, was the same man who brought a complaint before the council the very day that Ren had been arrested. This man wore the regal linens of a councilor, where he had once worn the tattered stitching of the working class.
Gnochi’s ghost retreated into his cell.
“So, the king has decided to grace us with his presence?” Ren made a grand gesture, then spat through the grate.
“Control that tongue or you’ll get the same as him,” Dorothea threatened.
Ren pressed his face to the window once again, his eyes finally adjusted to the harsh light. Gnochi’s cell was thrown open. In the mass of guard bodies, he caught a glimpse of his neighbor. Under the light, Gnochi looked gnarly. His bones protruded from skin like roots jutting from hard dirt.
He had not been talking to a ghost. Gnochi lived, his flesh and mind retaining their mortality.
“Come on,” Ren pleaded. “He’s been through enough.”
“He?” Dorothea spun, shoving his hand into Ren’s cell through the window grate, grasping at Ren’s mangy hair. “He killed my brother. He’ll be through enough when I say so.” Dorothea released Ren’s hair and stepped back into the middle of the hall. The king made a show of wiping his hands on his clothes. “Restrain him.”
Ren glimpsed the five guards subdue Gnochi, though only one would have been needed. The bard put up no fight. They strapped him to the board at his wrists, ankles, and across his chest. A wooden frame was secured around his head and neck.
“Skuddy?” Gnochi’s voice sounded weak. He addressed the man who came down with Dorothea. The councilor, Skuddy, turned away from Gnochi in shame.
Ren bellowed a sleep-deprived laugh that tore through the hollow chamber. “Boy, did I have the rotten luck to complain first. Don’t tell me, he threatened to burn the city and he gets the prime access to our executions? I voice the truth that you helped in your brother’s assassination and I get a noose around my neck?” Ren tasted bile at the back of this throat.
“Will one of you shut that pirate up?”
Promptly, Ren’s cell was opened and a guard entered, beating him back to his cot. Gritting through the pain, Ren kept an eye trained on Gnochi’s cell.
One of the guards held scissor blades into the flame of a torch that spilt unnecessary firelight. Ren strained to hear Gnochi’s panting voice over the sound and pain of fists connecting with his flesh. “Skuddy, no matter what happens, you have to keep Cleo safe. She had nothing to do with this. Get her to the Library.”
Skuddy remained quiet, but Ren saw his head nod. The action was faint enough to be visible, but not so obvious as to alert Dorothea.
“You should’ve thought about your whore before you killed my brother,” Dorothea yelled, sending a rough kick into Gnochi’s ribs.
Ren felt fear, thick like fog on a pond, though it was not Gnochi who reeked of it, for the bard remained motionless under the leather restraints.
“Is it nearly ready yet?” Dorothea asked the guard who was bathing the scissors in flame. “I tire of looking at his face. Makes me feel as though I’m drowning a puppy.”
The guard in Ren’s cell grew tired with his beating, so he returned to the corridor, forgetting to close Ren’s cell door.
“Yes, my king.” The guard held the scissors with care, its blade white with heat. “I’ll get the next blade in for the burn.”
“Good. Now, Skuddy. Will you do the honors?”
“Oh, Dorothea, please.”
“Either you do as I say, or I plunge this bl
ade into his heart. You decide. Oh, and decide quickly. Every second they cool off is another hour of agonizing torment.”
Ren saw the pair squat down by Gnochi’s face, pry his mouth open and secure it with some metal.
“Whart’r you doing?” Gnochi’s garbled yell met Ren’s ears, panic washing over his voice. His yells became muffled as though something had clamped over his tongue.
Skuddy was given the scissors; his hands drew near to Gnochi’s face. Screams of searing pain tore through the calm of the dungeon. Ren stumbled away from his door, easing it closed to buff away as many of Gnochi’s feral noises as possible. The light remained, pouring through the dusty slots of his window. He retreated farther into his cell, tripping over the charred crumbs of the burnt morsel of bread that was his last meal, and smashed his head on the mucky floor.
He had a vague awareness of pain shooting down his spine and a liquid pooling around his head, matting his already dirty hair. Though his mind fought to be released into the abyss of the unconscious, the screams rippling through his ears held his attention in an unforgiving vice. The faint sound of sizzling flesh mingled with the screams. Vomit spewed from his lips.
“Quickly, cauterize the wound, lest he bleed out.” Ren heard someone speak, but his mind would not release the speaker’s name. The sizzling returned. Flesh crackled in his ear as though he lay before a mighty pyre.
The sounds of torture curdled the blood in Ren’s veins. His vision faltered, the dank ceiling swayed as though he was back on his ship in the middle of the ocean, not hundreds of miles inland. He felt moisture trickle down his cheeks but made no effort to dry the tears before they dripped through his beard and into his mouth.
Sometime before an eternity had passed, Gnochi’s screams subsided and kind darkness returned to the dungeon, freeing Ren from the waking world, and granting him the peace of sleep.
Chapter 14
“Cleo, come here quick!” Kiren called out to her from the entryway.
As quickly as her still-queasy mind would allow, Cleo ran to the door and down the stairs. She found Kiren stooped over a note.
“It’s from Aarez,” she said.
Cleo would have been able to tell without the byline, however, because the letter’s scrawl was faint, its lettering small and precise.
‘Cleo and Kiren,
I suppose I’ve really messed up this time. I don’t recall what I did, but seeing the damage done on both of you assures me as much. So, I’m taking a few days to figure things out. I’m going out into the forest. Maybe I’ll find its namesake. Should I cross paths with this ominous well of hope, I’ll be sure to toss yours in as well as mine, so we all get a shot at a miracle.
And if this forest is hopeful in name alone, then perhaps I’ll at least snag a few pelts that we can take to Oslow.
Don’t worry about the cold. It doesn’t bother me. (Cleo, you may have to explain that to Kiren.)
I’ve got my bow, arrows, and my sword. I can best anything short of an army. Don’t come looking for me. I need to be alone.
Regards,
Hopewell Forest’s Resident Ventriloquist
Aarez.’
Cleo sat down before her packs and reread the letter, though his words failed to soften their sting with multiple readings. She folded the paper and placed it carefully in journal’s seam.
“So that’s it?” Kiren asked, storming around the common area. “You’re just going to leave him out there to fend for himself? What if he’s hurt, or freezing?” She peeked out the window and winced as if the cold air was hurting her from behind the pane of glass.
“Kiren, Aarez is a big boy,” Cleo said. “He has to be able to work out his own problems. I’ve told him before that Lucas brings nothing but grief. He’s acknowledged it himself. I think it’s more of an addiction. Can he really help it? Besides, as long as he has clothing covering his skin, he’ll be fine.”
“Why?”
“Because he can put his life force into each article. It’s like traveling with live animals nuzzled up against your body. And he doesn’t need to worry about losing control of his life.”
“Then why did he lose control with Lucas?”
“Because, Lucas is modeled after a sentient being,” Cleo explained. “When Aarez sends his life to the doll, it becomes Lucas. It assumes life. I’m not sure on all the science of it. As you might be able to tell, we don’t exactly talk about it often. As I understand it, a thinking-being’s most instinctual goal is self-preservation. For Lucas, self-preservation is maintaining the level of life he takes from Aarez. In many cases, taking more than Aarez is willing to give.”
“So, he loses a part of himself and becomes—”
“Pidgeon,” Cleo said.
“He’s lucky that he hasn’t woken up in prison, or dead,” Kiren said.
Cleo nodded. She had run a similar train of thought when she first learned of the extent of Aarez’s echo. “So, Kiren, story time,” she said, gesturing to the cot.
“I thought you would want to go first.” Kiren chuckled as she sat down across from Cleo.
“Nope. This injury means I can pick my placement.” Cleo pressed her finger into the swollen bruise under her eye. The touch brought sparks of pain that flashed across her face.
“Okay,” Kiren said, looking deflated. She pushed air out of her mouth in a show of thinking. “I used to run with this gang. We were tighter than most families. The leader, who was not much older than me, started working the streets when he was a kid. We did mostly small-scale things. Help a baker out if another gang started extorting ‘protection money.’ Kinda vigilante work,” she said, pausing.
“One day, we got word of a train of kids being taken up to Providence’s keep. Kids can be used for anything. Maybe their parents sold them into servitude, or battle school. It was common knowledge in Blue Haven that with Providence, kids weren’t in the keep learning table-etiquette. Once they end up behind the high walls, there was nothing we could do to save them. So, for us to hear of a group before they were even in the city was rare. It had the potential to be a big score for us.
“Our leader worked raw to figure out where and when the caravan would enter Blue Haven proper. Once in, he stalked it closer than any predator has ever stalked its prey.”
Cleo looked up from her transcription. She didn’t know if Kiren was deliberately trying to be flowery, or if the woman had achieved the mind-body separation that Gnochi experienced when he told stories.
“We had agreed,” Kiren said, “to wait in ambush at a place where as few bystanders would be drawn in. I was there with a few others who would secure the kids. It was my first assignment, so they kept me back.
“When the time passed, but neither the caravan, nor our leader arrived, we rushed down the road to see if they had been held up. I don’t remember exactly what I feared had happened. Some scenario where our leader hung from his entrails. Well, that wasn’t quite the case.
“We arrived on scene five minutes after they should have passed through our ambush.” Kiren’s face had seemingly lost all its color. It was obvious that this memory still hurt her to recall. “There had been a hired thug watching over, and transporting the dozen boys and girls, none older than seven. The thug lay dead, a torrent of blood and shredded flesh exposed where his trousers would’ve belted on. At first sight, I knelt over and vomited into the street.”
“And the kids?” Cleo asked.
“Shaken up, as you might expect. Our second in command was working to calm them down. He had that way with kids. I remember one boy though. He was fighting against us, saying, ‘My mommy said that I have to do this to help the family.’ It hit him hard, our second in command. You could tell he was fighting back tears. He, himself, was abandoned by his parents as a child. Most of us were, but he always took it as a personal affront. In fact, I know he kept tabs on his parents, however discretely so.
“So, he looked to the boy, sadness creeping over his face. ‘Your mommy sold you to a devil
of a man. No money is worth the punishment you would have faced within those walls,’ he said, and then just walked away. Our leader scowled at me, as if I had put the words in his ears.” Kiren looked to her hands, which she had knit together in tension.
“I know that must have been hard,” Cleo said. “Thank you for sharing.”
“Yes, well, I’ll feel better about it when we are even,” she said, a slight smile working its way to her lips.
“Yeah, I don’t have any good stories to talk about. Gnochi was always the one to come up with them.”
“Surely there must be something. Some moment in your past worth a few minutes to recall.” Kiren seemed to grow impatient with Cleo’s delayed response. “Gnochi isn’t always going to be able to tell his stories. Where will you be then? What will you do?”
Cleo thought long on what she could say. “I’ll tell you how I got to where I am now.” She paused, sucking in a breath. “I was kept hidden from the world by my father. Probably because of my echo. I never knew my mother and had no friends, so I would sit in his library and read his books. First age books. Storybooks. The characters within were my closest companions.” She allowed her fluttering heart a moment to settle. Why was she so willing to tell this stranger a story she was reluctant to tell Gnochi? “One day, I was given the opportunity to cross the ocean and come here.
“It was a long journey. Months of confinement on a small vessel. I was often in solitude all day, and when not imprisoned, I was under the close supervision of my uncle, as if he expected me to toss tools around or go jump into the water below. Still, I found peace and solitude in watching the waves endlessly rolling outside my window. The ocean blue, spanning from horizon to horizon, met with the pale blue of the sky. Together, the pair filled the vista.” Cleo stopped, aware of what she was saying. The critique she had of Kiren’s storytelling bravado was rearing itself into her own mind. Was it as grandiose as she told, or was she playing up the story?
“Sea travel,” Cleo said, shivering. “It’s not a punishment I’d wish on my worst enemy. It’s a prison where your cell doors are the open waves. Eventually we docked in the port city of Imuny, which, despite all of the nasty things said by the crew, looked the same as any port city back home. It was no more a land of chaos and violence than the ocean which threatened to swallow our ship whole every waking moment during the journey. Anyway,” she said, continuing her tale, “an opportunity presented itself to me. I had a window to escape my uncle and the crew, so I took it. Of course, I didn’t plan on their catching on so quickly. Backed into an alley, my only out put me in the services of an inn mistress where Gnochi was to perform.
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