Kilai coughed into her fist, looking horrified, and she tried to slow down her chewing. It didn’t seem to appease her. “Neylah-wei was just telling me that she saw two men go this way, not two days ago.”
Rook paused her feast to stare up at the woman. “’ayre ‘id ‘ay go?”
“Did you see where they went?” Kilai translated, subtly shaking her head at Rook.
Neylah’s gaze was distant as she appeared to think. “They appeared to be heading south. I can’t say for certain but most travellers that come through this way are heading for Korrikbai. From there it’s easy to get a ship or train to Tsellyr. There’s really no other reason to come past here.”
Rook shared a glance with Kilai. Would Janus still be going to Tsellyr? Why, when he knew that they were also going that way?
“Where is the rest of your village?”
The woman flinched at the question, lines in papery skin deepening. “There are few of us left now. Most left after that… thing came. I wanted to take Kallir out of here too, but where could we go? This has always been my home.” Her eyes went to one wall, gaze hollow. She was seeing things they could not, projections from memories past.
“How long has it been this way?”
“It started as nothing. Just the occasional misplaced item. Yusheem would think I stole the bread from her windowsill, even though I told her it was hard as bricks, the stupid woman.” The flicker of a smile found her lips before it slid into a grimace. “It soon bred hate amongst us. It’s not good, you know, a small community like this one. People were already too involved in one another’s business. But then...” She shuddered and glanced at her daughter who was kicking her legs back and forth, clutching a cup between pudgy fingers.
“Then?” prompted Rook.
“It was like people were possessed. Like friends you had known your whole life had suddenly become strangers. Then that strange man came and everything got so much worse. It was as if the spirit of one of Var Kunir’s demons had possessed the village itself. Not even the house was safe. I told Kallir to keep hold of my hand… but in the madness I realised I had lost her and –” she choked off as a sob shook her shoulders, head falling into her hands.
“Wait,” said Kilai, brows furrowing. “What man did you see? Can you describe him to me?”
Tear-streaked cheeks lifted from the burrow of her hands. “I-I don’t really remember? He had golden hair and he was very pale. His entire presence was wrong, like he wasn’t really human? When he looked at me, it was as if I wasn’t even there. And he kept talking to himself, even though there was nothing there.”
The soldier, Kilai mouthed to Rook, and she nodded in return. It had to be him. She shivered, remembering the raw power he had possessed at his call. Remembering what he had said. I will unite our worlds.
“What is it? Who is this man? Should I be worried?”
“No, not at all,” said Kilai. “We just wanted to know who has been through this way. Did he go the same way as the other man?”
“I couldn’t say. I’m sorry.”
“Did you see anything else?” Rook asked. “Like glowing lights? Or maybe a strange looking creature? Was there a storm? Lightning? Thunder?”
The woman bit her lip, eyes darting between them and then back to her daughter, now playing happily with a doll. “I think there was a storm that night. It was cold for the high season. I think.”
“Did you –”
Kilai grabbed her arm and shook her head. “We’re sorry to distress you any further, Neylah-wei. My friend is the curious sort but she means well.”
Neylah nodded, still looking unsettled. Rook tried to quash the storm of questions swirling in her mind and focus on what they did know. Like the fact that they were on their way to Tsellyr, regardless of whatever else happened. Like the fact that the soldier was still out there, with a goal that could shake the foundations of their world if he wasn’t stopped.
It meant that they should be on their way.
Kilai clearly felt the same, for she said, “We really must be leaving now, while it is still light out. We thank you for your hospitality.”
“You have to leave already? Are you sure you can’t stay?”
“I assure you it will be safe here now,” said Rook.
“How can you be sure it won’t come back?”
“I sent it back to the otherworld. It won’t trouble you any longer, that much I can promise.”
Neylah still looked rattled. She shot to her feet, pottering around some dusty cupboards while Rook and Kilai shared glances, mouthing to each other so as not to distress her more. Their host returned with cloth packages and a wineskin of water. “Some cheese and meat for your journey. Thank you for saving my daughter. Really, I don’t know what I would have done if...”
Rook took them with a smile and placed them in her satchel. “Thank you, Neylah-wei. That’s very kind of you.”
With a last clasp of hands and a ruffle of the little girl’s hair, she stepped out into the brightness of a late morning, the sky a clear blue. There was something about seeing a cloudless sky that made her feel weightless, like somehow, everything would be all right. They had some distance still to go but they were on their way and sometimes that was all that mattered.
“Will you be all right to travel?” asked Kilai as she followed her outside.
“I feel fine,” she replied. Still groggy but it would wear off. “I should check and see if I can sense anything.”
“You don’t want to collapse again.”
Rook waved her off. “It’s fine. Just give me a moment.” Plunging down into the well of her power, she brushed the familiar presence of The Rook, surging up to meet her. With a deep breath they became one, her mind opening up to the threads of the otherworld connected to this world. The sudden awareness of life all around her was dizzying; the distant scrabble of a lizard through the dirt and a hawk circling overhead; the blips of consciousness belonging to some very weak riftspawn nearby; the warm tingle of threads of energy all around her begging to be tugged.
No, she scolded The Rook. That’s not what I’m doing.
Her companion shrieked in protest, the sound echoing through her mind.
“What is it?” said Kilai, peering at her. “What’s wrong?”
She held up a hand, a faint familiar scent tugging at the back of her mind. Battling the beast within, Rook zoned in on it and felt her heart race as a deep, steady signature pulsed from somewhere near enough that she could feel each wave of energy, rolling out like waves crashing towards the shore. The scent of charcoal filled her nostrils, tickling.
“It’s Viktor,” she said. “It’s Viktor!”
“You know where he is?”
“I can feel him again.” She snapped to attention, quashing The Rook deep down inside. “He’s alive, Kilai. He’s alive and I’m going to find him.”
She didn’t realise how relieved she felt until she knew, but now that she did, it was like all the tension had bled out of her. Viktor was alive. She could feel his presence out there, weak but calling to her. A beacon to guide her. Now she had to make sure she found him in time, before he disappeared again.
*
The next time Viktor awoke it was with a jolt, jerking into a sitting position with a racing heart. Pain spiked through him but he gritted his teeth against it, eyes darting around the room in confusion. Where was he? It looked like a small hovel of a room, stained wallpaper cracked and peeling away from the grey flesh beneath. One small window threw a few lethargic beams of light across a wooden floor, the window too high for him to see where he was. The bed in which he had slept was nothing but a thin mattress covered by a ratty blanket fraying at the corners. He wrinkled his nose at the musty smell.
Padding to the shard of glass that had been taped to the wall as a mirror, he gaped at the stranger staring back at him. In the spider web of cracks his reflection revealed muddy brown eyes sunken into an ashen face, the usual warmth of his skin tone washed out by blood
loss. One side of his face was marred with cuts and bruises, sore and swollen beneath prodding fingers. As he stood he felt the wound flare again and he pulled his shirt up with a hiss. Prying off the bloodstained bandage, his fingers roamed tender flesh, trying to maintain his breathing as pain flared in waves that threatened to pull him back under. It made him dizzy, seeing how bad the injury was. Was the bullet still inside him?
There was only one way he was going to get out of this place. Viktor had no way of knowing where Janus was or when he would be back, if at all, but if he wanted to escape this strange prison he had found himself in, he was going to have to fish the bullet out himself. He cringed at the thought, body remembering the agony of Janus twisting his fingers into the wound. He scolded himself for the weakness. It would just have to be done. He had witnessed the process enough times to know roughly what was required.
But he had no tools. Viktor didn’t even possess a knife. Tearing through the box of a room, he ransacked a small cupboard with nothing but thick layers of dust and then checked his blankets, revealing more dust and grime. A cockroach scuttled from under his mattress and he yelped, stumbling back. No luck. It only left him with one option; one he was reluctant to consider, his stomach heaving in fear. When he rubbed his hands together they were slick with sweat.
To think he had chosen this over staying with Red. Over staying with the safety of what he knew. Viktor was a fool. A stupid, naive, reckless fool. He deserved this.
The first attempt at taking out the bullet failed before it could even begin. One touch of his finger to blood and flesh sent a jolt of sickening pain through him and he careened into the wall, steadying his weak legs against it as he gagged. Waiting until the worst of it passed, he sucked in ragged breaths and psyched himself up. Just do it. One quick pull and it’ll be out. Still he could barely manage to look at the wound, blood oozing out, hot and sticky. Time was looming over him, so decidedly aware was he that Janus could be back at any moment. He had to do it now. Squeezing his eyes shut, Viktor prepared himself for the pain to come.
With a sharp motion he stuck his fingers into the wound, screaming in agony at the burn. Deeper and deeper he dug, suddenly fearful that the bullet was already out and he was doing this for nothing, until his forefinger scraped the edge of something metal. Whole body shaking with the pain, he pressed his shoulder against the wall and used the force of it to dig in even deeper until he could grasp the bullet in his hands and yank it out.
Viktor sagged, the strength sapped out of him. He was barely able to keep himself upright. When he was able to control his trembling fingers enough to lift them to his face, he could see the flattened bullet between red coated skin, so small and yet so deadly. It pulsed with a strange energy, unnatural and dull. It left him with a haze upon his mind, clouding over his thoughts. Inspecting it under muted light, he wondered where Janus had found such a thing – for it seemed to contain a similar power to Rook’s riftblades. The man had been so secretive and yet he had thought little of it. Such was not an unusual attitude on the streets but still, he should have been warier.
With a scowl he launched the bullet across the room, hearing it smack against the far wall and roll along the floor. Suddenly his senses felt sharper, like the veil over him had been lifted and he could finally see again. Inhaling, he felt that same power trickle through him once more, a sudden thrill whispering down his spine. That old sleeping giant in the back of his mind cracked open an eye. Heat flared through him. Reconnected to the deep sea of his new power, he found himself engulfed by green fire, skin itching at the warmth and his wound tingling. He watched dumbfounded as skin gradually sealed back together, the torn flesh turning a raw pink. Running a gentle thumb over it, he found it still tender but healed.
The power staggered him. How he had come to possess it, he could not possibly imagine. Even more terrifying was the idea that it could be taken from him. Viktor did not think he could go back to the way he had been before. To be being so trapped. So powerless. With his fire came a sense of liberation that made him feel born anew. Viktor would be caged no longer.
Pressing his ear to the door, he listened for noises outside. Reconnecting to his power had opened up the world around him in a much more visceral way, aware of subtle sensations and sounds he hadn’t ever experienced before the fire had found him. Distantly he was aware of voices and the hustle and bustle of a crowd of people somewhere out there beyond the building, but his immediate surroundings were quiet, barely a rustle beyond the scuttling of a mouse in the next room.
Now was as good a time as any, he figured, and he gently tugged open the door, wincing at the whine of hinges that needed oiling. Heart hammering, he poked his head around the door to find a long, dimly lit corridor with several doors along each wall. No movement. It seemed that no one had heard the noise. Inspiring confidence, he stepped out into the corridor, listening for any surprises. With so much going on around the building, it was difficult to concentrate on what he wanted to. He still struggled with how to focus his power on a single sensation.
Tentative steps had taken him most of the length of the corridor when a peal of laughter startled him into the wall. Caught off guard, he had no time to escape and he cringed as a man and a woman stumbled down the hall, leaning into one another as more laughter filled up the room. Neither spared Viktor so much as a glance before they entered a door on his left and it took him a few beats before he registered that he was safe, tension bleeding from his posture in one ragged sigh. They didn’t care, too caught up in the relative security of such a seedy location. He was fine.
Moving quicker now, he turned the corner to see a set of rickety stairs with faint light framing a door at the bottom. Viktor sprinted down them and paused at the door, trying to listen but hearing nothing other than his own pulse drumming in his head. He needed to calm down or he was going to explode, recognising the thrum of energy building inside him. It scared him, knowing what he could do. Knowing what could happen to him if people recognised who he was.
Viktor wished he knew the answer to who he was.
When he cracked the door open he was nearly blinded by the bright light that lit up the room, a small hall with a desk in one corner. There was no one there but above there were sets of keys hanging from nails in the wall, papered with the same ugly brown as his room had been, and somehow equally stained. From what he could gather he was in some kind of cheap inn but he had no idea where that inn happened to be. Not enough time had passed for him to be much further than from where he had fainted, so he still had to be somewhere in the north of the Yllaizlo. But that still left a lot of options, all equally unfamiliar to him.
Poking around the desk revealed little. A rusty bell was planted on the top of the desk to ring whoever was in charge of the place and a book had been left open, barely legible scribbles marking the lodgers staying, Viktor could only presume. A cursory glance confirmed that Janus was not listed but he would not have expected anything less, so he moved onto the drawers at the back. He accidentally knocked over a bottle of ink and scrambled to pick it up, cursing as it pooled along the wood and dripped down onto his shoes. He wiped at them as best as he could with a cloth he found and moved on. Pocketing a few useful items – some lint, a ball of string, and a pair of cracked spectacles – he went to leave when some letters beneath a thick leather-bound journal caught his attention.
Prying them out, he sifted through them curiously. They had come from a companion of the owner in Tsellyr and they were addressed to lodgings in Villbai, which could only be where he was now. He was aware of the time, so he only briefly scanned them out of curiosity for word regarding Tsellyr. The writer complained about the military presence in the city, saying that it was becoming so unbearable he was leaving for the country for a time. Supposedly curfews were being set and parts of the city curtained off. Viktor frowned, considering. He had wanted to go to Tsellyr for as long as he could remember but if it was truly as the letters described then he wasn’t so sure he w
ished to go.
So absorbed was he that he didn’t hear the sound of footsteps until the door pushed open. Viktor quickly ducked behind the desk with the letters still in hand. Hoping the person would immediately go upstairs was an unfounded wish. The footsteps had stopped but he couldn’t see what was happening beyond the scope of the hollow behind the desk. He realised with a pang of fear that he had left the drawer open and the telltale drip of ink marked a path straight to him. On his haunches he bounced to the edge of the desk and peered around to try and glimpse what was going on, only for a voice to make him jump.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” The man waiting at the desk wore a disdainful expression. After another minute of waiting he rang the bell. When no one came he tolled it again, several times in succession, the sound only rattling Viktor’s already frayed nerves.
“All right, all right,” called a voice from the back room, “I’m coming! If you would just give me a minute.”
The stranger huffed a theatrical sigh and leant against the desk, unfolding a newspaper that had been tucked under his arm. Viktor tried to shuffle around the side of the desk without revealing himself to the man, who was mercifully absorbed in a story about a new farmers’ levy that had many up in arms. He wasn’t that far from the exit, if only he could slip past the man and get there before the owner, potting around in the back with a few rattles and bumps, could return to find him there.
It seemed Viktor was all out of luck. A short, squat man in a grubby shirt strode from the back room and cut himself off mid-sentence in a rant about rude customers, his eyes locked on a wide-eyed Viktor. For a moment all was silent, their gazes unwavering and mouths wide open. It was almost as if the clock had frozen, the hourglass full at the bottom. Then the man with the newspaper leant over the desk and said, “Excuse me, I am right here.”
The Reaping Season Page 3