Blade of Dream, page 30
“I don’t think that—”
“No, I’ll finish, thanks. My cousin is a difficult woman. She’s angry and rough, and when she’s in a mood, she can vanish up her own asshole like no one I’ve ever known. She doesn’t have many friends, and the ones she does, she doesn’t always know what to do with. But she’s been kind to me when no one else was. You understand me? She was good to me. And no one else was.”
“I understand,” Garreth said.
“Things like the one between you two bloom and they disappear. I’m not saying you have to live your life and die by her side, but if I ever find out you’ve been needlessly cruel to her, I will spend the rest of my life destroying the rest of yours.”
She took half a step back, her chin lifted in defiance. When he was very young, he’d seen a drawing in some book his mother had read to him or to Vasch of a mouse in a warrior’s armor facing a swarm of evil rats. The memory of it made him smile.
“I didn’t know who her family was when I met her,” he said. “I like her. I like who I am when I’m alone with her.”
Theddan’s gaze shifted from defiance to something more present, more thoughtful. “What’d you be willing to give up for her?”
“What do you want?”
Theddan looked into his eyes, made a small, satisfied sound, and turned back toward the Temple. Garreth settled himself more deeply into his cloak and turned west. Walking made his sides hurt, but everything did. This at least gave him some sense of being able to anticipate the pain.
The wind wasn’t high, but it was vicious. His earlobes ached, his nose ran. An old man with a ragged cart and an old mule clattered down the street before him and turned south. Garreth was more than half tempted to follow him and let the curving, tight streets of Longhill break the air. A crow jeered at him from the rooftop.
Somewhere far ahead, across the still-frozen Khahon and up the face of Oldgate, people were starting to realize that the prince’s daughter had gone missing. Some of them would be the people who cared for her or for the role she played in the life of the city, some might be the people who had sent the assassins, and Garreth didn’t have any idea how to tell one from the other. Elaine couldn’t remain where she was. She couldn’t go back where she’d come from. She couldn’t flee the city. In his memory, the dead man said She’s dead if you stay. But she was dead no matter what, and every path he reached for, every hope he tried to construct, blew away in the knife-sharp wind of Kithamar. He didn’t know—couldn’t know—who or where their enemies were. No ally could be trusted…
His steps slowed without his noticing. He found himself standing in the middle of the street, hands at his side, staring at the filthy, ice-laced cobblestones as if he were reading an answer written on the skin of the city. He looked back toward the Temple, south toward Longhill. What’d you be willing to give up for her? He pulled his hands deeper into their sleeves, trying to find warmth as he turned for what had once been home.
When he reached it, the sun had already passed its midpoint. The ice in the streets was thin, cracking, and rotten. He walked to the door that had been his once and knocked on it twice. His breath was quick, but not from exertion. The door opened on Serria, and he watched the pleasantness fall from her when she recognized him like she’d been wearing a mask.
“You’re not coming in this house,” Serria said. She stood in the doorway with her arms crossed and glowered at him like the storm that had just gone by. “It’s not a day since you humiliated this family. Not a day. And you expect welcome? You’re mad.”
“I’m not here to see you,” Garreth said.
“Your father is at the warehouse. Find him there if he’ll see you.”
“I’m here for my sister.”
Confusion flickered in Serria’s eyes, but only for a moment. The wariness that took its place was well enough deserved. Garreth waited a moment before he went on.
“If you want me to stay here on the street while you tell her I’m here, that’s fine with me, but it will mean more people wondering why I’ve come.”
Doubt warred with spite, and spite lost. She stepped back and gestured him curtly in. “You can wait in the lesser hall. If she doesn’t want to speak with you—”
“I’ll go. I’m not here to make trouble.”
Serria walked with him as if he were a new guest who needed to be shown the way and closed the door behind her when she left. Garreth stood quietly to the count of twenty, then went out to the corridor and back toward the main stairs and the family’s floor. The footsteps coming down toward him as he rose up were his mother’s.
She looked thinner than she had in the summer. There was a touch more grey in her hair, but it seemed thicker and less constrained than it had, as if her time in the north had remade her into a slightly wilder version of herself. She slowed when she saw him, then stopped. It had been almost a year since she’d first left. He was a different man than he’d been then. For all he knew, she might be a different woman.
“You and I need to speak,” she said.
“This may not be the time. I have urgent business with Yrith,” he said. “I’m fairly sure Serria’s sent for Father, so I only have until he comes back and throws me out.”
Mother considered this, but only for a moment.
“She’s in my drawing room with Vasch,” she said, and then continued down the stair. Garreth took the rest of the flight two at a time.
Yrith and Vasch were at the low table, sitting on two sides of a corner. The contract they were reading through was slanted between them. Garreth pulled out a chair and sat across from Yrith. He didn’t remember her being as calm or as amused as she seemed now. Her hair was braided back in a style that spoke more of Kithamar than the north, and she wore a dress that was cut in a swooping style that made reference to Inlisc clothing without being mistaken for it. It was a little shock to realize she was beautiful.
“Garreth?” Vasch said. “What’s the matter?”
“I need to ask for a huge favor with some real risk to it that I don’t deserve.”
“Anything,” Vasch said.
“That’s kind, but I don’t need it from you.”
Yrith raised her eyebrows and pushed the contract aside. The paper hissed against the wood. When she spoke, her accent was thick, but less thick than it had been. “And what is it you would want of me and not my husband?”
“I need you to intercede for me. Plead my case.”
“To whom?”
“My enemy.”
Yrith walked through Longhill with a confidence Garreth couldn’t match. He didn’t know if it was that her face and hair folded so gracefully with the Inlisc of Kithamar, or if the wooden buildings and narrow streets were more like her home than the stucco and stone of Riverport, or—most likely to him—she simply didn’t understand the danger they were in by being there. Whatever the case, he followed behind her in a brown cloak with the hood pulled up to hide his face and scanned the doorways and alley mouths and windows, ready if trouble came.
Yrith met the curious eyes with a smile and a greeting in a language Garreth didn’t speak. Sometimes she would pause with some stranger and ask something in a string of syllables that he couldn’t make into individual words. Most of the time, the other person would just shake their head or apologize in phrases that Garreth could follow, but twice older men answered haltingly in that same tongue of clicks and skitters. It was eerie, seeing her be so clearly a native in his own city where he himself felt so outside of it.
The clouds had thickened in the afternoon, and the air smelled of rain and shit and rot. Tiny white flecks fell from the sky, neither snow nor hail, but something of both. Yrith ignored the cold magnificently until bits of white adorned her hair like tiny pearls. It was almost dark when she paused outside a doorway with a bright yellow banner. The cloth was marked with Inlisc characters, and Yrith knocked at the door, then stood back and waited. An ancient man with stick-thin arms and wisps of hair still clinging to his scalp opened the door and squinted out.
Yrith spoke in her language, and the man’s eyes widened. He answered her in the same tongue, and fluently. Yrith smiled, and pointed to herself and then to Garreth as she answered back. The old man shook his head not in negation but amazement. For a minute or more, the two traded words back and forth, their inflections of warmth and pleasure more telling even without knowing what exactly they said. Yrith asked a question, and the old man’s face fell into sudden distrust. His answer was short and sharp. Yrith pointed back at Garreth, and the old man squinted at him uncertainly. For a moment, they were all silent, then the man pointed down the street, said something more, and curved his hand. Yrith bowed to him, then rushed up to kiss his cheek before turning south and walking away. Garreth had to trot to catch up with her.
“Did that work?” he asked.
“We will go and find out.”
They made their way along the sinuous, narrow street. Garreth felt the weight of attention from the windows they passed. A bluecloak alone in Longhill was an invitation to trouble, but he wasn’t a bluecloak. Not right now.
Yrith turned down an alleyway that seemed made more from shadows than wood. Her steps became less certain, and she looked back past him as if watching to see if they were being followed. Garreth ached between his shoulder blades and at his jaw. She stopped at a door with a splintered wooden handle and hinges on the inside.
“Are you certain?” she said. “We can leave now with nothing, but this is the last time that will be true.”
“I don’t have an option,” he said.
Yrith knocked smartly at the door and spoke in her language for what felt like an hour or a few seconds. Garreth’s heart was tapping against his ribs and he had to fight to keep from reaching for his blade. When she was finished, she took a coin from her wallet, leaned down in the muck and filth, and slipped it under the door.
Nothing happened.
Yrith stood, wiping her hands on her cloak, and peered one way down the alley, and then the other.
“What happens now?” Garreth said.
“There will be an answer. It may come now, or later. We can wait here or go back to—”
The door opened. The man who stepped out was Inlisc, broad across the shoulders, and hard at the eyes. He looked at Yrith, then at Garreth, then back to the woman. “Stay here,” he said, and retreated, closing the door behind him.
“You can go,” Garreth said. “I can do this part alone.”
“I explained before, brother. The walking-away time isn’t now and won’t come again. What’s begun is begun.”
Garreth took a deep breath, crossed his arms, and regretted that he’d ever had the idea to come here. Above them, the strip of pale sky grew darker. The sound of the wind humming and whistling through the city was louder and more violent than the thin breeze he felt in the alleyway. Cold seeped into his feet and his fingers until he had to start pacing to get full feeling back. Yrith seemed calm, but maybe that was only fatalism. Once the die was cast, there was no point shouting.
The door opened again, and the man stepped out. The Inlisc woman who followed him had a scar down one side of her face and one milky eye. She wore pale canvas trousers and a shirt with a workman’s vest over it. Her hair was black and cut close to her scalp. This time, there was no blood on her hands.
Yrith dropped to her knees and bowed her head. A beat later, Garreth followed her lead.
“Stand up, child,” Aunt Thorn said to Yrith. “You have my attention.”
Yrith stood as she’d been told. Garreth tried to think how he’d move if the big man tried to force her through the door. Or if Aunt Thorn tried to hurt her.
“Thank you, Aunt, for hearing me.”
Aunt Thorn waved a hand like she was shooing away a gnat. “I’m surprised to find a daughter of the north in Kithamar. You came with the caravan?”
“The caravan came to me, and to my husband. And my new family in Riverport.”
“Plots within plots within plots,” Aunt Thorn said, and smiled. “And now you have a favor to ask from me. No, wait. Uyllif says you have an injured woman who you want me to care for, protect from her enemies, and release unharmed and without fetter when you come back for her or when she wants to go. Is that right?”
“It is.”
“But it’s not really your request, is it. It’s his. You’re spending your birthright on a Hansch boy?”
Yrith looked at Garreth where he still knelt. “He is my husband’s brother, and so my brother as well.”
“So you feel obligated to do as he tells you? That’s thin soup, child.”
“I am repaying my debt to him,” Yrith said.
“Your debt?” Aunt Thorn said. “And what do you owe this one?”
“He saved me from a bad marriage.”
Aunt Thorn made a low, amused sound and turned to Garreth. Her one clear eye met his and narrowed. “I know you. Why do I know you?”
“We met,” Garreth said. “You told me how much you respected rules.”
Her eyes widened and a cruel smile plucked at her lips. The tightness in Garreth’s back turned to an ache.
“The bluecloak boy. You killed one of my crew.”
“Respectfully, he was trying to gut a friend of mine when I did.”
“And yet you ask me to take this woman in. Why?”
“Desperation,” Garreth said. “You and the one who stole from you showed me the way. He came to us because he knew we weren’t you. There are forces at work against the woman we’re discussing. I don’t know who they are, but I know they aren’t you. That makes you the only safe place for her now.”
“Well, she’s fucked, then, isn’t she? What’s her name.”
Garreth shook his head. “Do you agree to the terms?”
“I could just kill you both where you stand.”
“Could,” he agreed. “But you still wouldn’t know her name.”
For an eternity, Aunt Thorn looked at him with her attention elsewhere. It was like she was listening to music that only she could hear. She took the coin that Yrith had passed under the door and pressed it back into the girl’s palm. “This isn’t enough. Money won’t buy this one, not even for a child of the north.”
Garreth’s mouth went dry. “What, then?” he asked.
“Owe me a favor,” Aunt Thorn said, locking her one good eye on him. “Just one, but no question or hesitation from you when I demand it. Anything I ask of you, when I ask it. That’s the price.”
“Done,” Garreth said.
Aunt Thorn’s smile was almost pitying. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? Well, we’re all idiots sometimes.” She turned her attention back to Yrith. “We’re agreed, daughter. I’ll take her in, look after her, keep her safe from anyone, and let her go free without even my smallest hooks in her when you reclaim her or when she asks to go. Now, tell me where my men can find her.”
In her dream, Elaine was pulling worms out of her neck. She could see them just under the skin from an angle that her actual, waking eyes couldn’t have done without a mirror. When she went to pinch at them, her skin gave way under her fingertips like she was made of soil. The worms were thicker than earthworms and yellower. The segments of their bodies were hard, like they’d just started growing shells and weren’t very good at it yet. When she caught one, she drew it out slowly, feeling it lose its grip in the depths of her flesh. It was the same bright pain and shuddering pleasure as pulling off a scab. Then she’d lay the dying worm in a row with the others she’d harvested from her wounds and go back to pluck another one out. She knew it should have been horrifying, but with the logic of dreams, she felt only a kind of growing physical satisfaction.
She caught one and knew without knowing how that it was the last. As she drew it out, her eyes opened.
Her head felt clear for the first time since the attack at House Left. Her neck and shoulder ached, but they didn’t throb. An older Inlisc woman with a green lacquer box was sitting beside her cot. The light came from a pair of candles in a glass box on the table. It took Elaine a moment to remember where she was and how she’d gotten there.
“Still warm, then?” the older woman asked. Elaine had heard her name before. Erja.
“I am,” Elaine said, reaching for her shoulder and neck. There was a thick bandage there and a warm feeling on the skin beneath it.
“Well, the fever’s not broken, but we have the rot stopped. Don’t worry at that poultice. I’ll come and change it out tonight when my work’s done. Until then, drink water until your piss is all the way to clear and sleep as much as you can.”
Elaine nodded, and the grinding feeling under her skin felt less than before. Not gone, but less.
As Erja packed up the contents of her box, pulled a cask of water up next to the bed, and prepared to leave, Elaine lay back. “I was dreaming about worms in my skin. I was pulling them out one at a time. I don’t know what that meant.”
“It’s just a dream,” Erja said. “Dreams don’t mean shit.”
Her room was small. The walls were a baked clay brick with iron hooks thicker than her wrist set in them at off intervals. The floor was fresh rushes on stone, the cot rough canvas on a frame of wood and iron. When Erja left, it was through a brick archway without a door or even tapestry to pretend at privacy, just an iron chain strung across it at waist height. Elaine’s world was this room, a wide, squat hallway beyond it, and a private bath where cold water ran from a pipe in the wall and into a drain in the floor, the arrangement serving as night pot and shower both. Sometimes voices echoed from deeper in the halls.
She knew she should be afraid, but at first she hadn’t had the energy to feel anything deeply, and as day slid into sunless day until she couldn’t say if she’d been there for a week or a month, she’d become almost used to her situation. They hadn’t killed her, and they could have. She had to assume they didn’t want to.
Her memory of coming to the hidden rooms was fragmentary. She remembered being in the private chapel, the pain in her shoulder and neck slowly spiraling up again, and a fever blurring the line between daydream and nightmare. She had a strong impression of Theddan speaking, and a man’s voice answering back something about Garreth. After that, there was a discontinuity. She remembered being carried in an open litter, with drops of freezing rain tapping her face. She’d felt too cold and too hot at the same time. She remembered someone shouting and a dark alleyway with a hidden stairway leading down into the earth. Her mother had been there wearing an old-fashioned white death shroud like an ancient drawing. Elaine figured her recollection wasn’t entirely to be trusted.
