An Affinity for Steel, page 129
“You,” she whispered harshly, “stupid little roach.”
Possibly not desire.
“What?” he asked.
“Those were your better times for us? Up to my elbows in fat and blood while you scribbled away notes on livers and kidneys? That’s what you think of when you think of us?”
“I was just—”
“You were just being freakish and weird, as usual,” she snarled. “Is there anything about you that doesn’t make one’s skin crawl?”
He reeled as if struck. He hadn’t quite expected that. Nor did he really expect to say what he said next.
“Yes,” he said calmly, “I’ve been told my ability to keep silent around the ignorant and mentally deficient is quite admirable.”
“I find that hard to believe, as I’ve never actually seen you be silent.”
“No? Well, let me refresh your memory.” His voice was sharp and cold, like a blade. “Whenever you’ve prayed to deities that don’t exist, whenever you’ve blamed something on the will of your gods that you could have helped, whenever you’ve prattled on about heavens and morals and all this other garbage you don’t actually believe for any reason other than to convince your toddler-with-fever-delirium-equivalent brain that you’re in any way superior to any of the people you choose to share company with,” he spat the last words, “I’ve. Said. Nothing.”
And so, too, did she say nothing.
No threats. No retorts. No tears. She turned around, calmly walked past Bralston and left the hut, hands smeared with blood, brow smeared with blood, leaving a room full of silence.
Bralston stared at the door before looking back to Dreadaeleon.
“You disappoint me, concomitant,” he said simply.
“Good,” Dreadaeleon spat back. “I’ll start a running tally. By the end of the day, I hope to have everyone dumber than me loathing me. I’ll throw a party to celebrate it.”
“One might call your intelligence into question, acting the way you do.”
“One might, if one were a lack-witted imbecile. You saw the way she was talking to me, talking to you.”
“I did.”
“And you said nothing.”
“Possibly because my experience with women extends past necropsies,” Bralston said smoothly. “Concomitant, your ire is understandable, but not an excuse for losing your temper. A member of the Venarium is, above all else, in control of his abilities and himself.”
Dreadaeleon flashed a black, humorless smile at the man. “You are just hilarious.”
“And why is that?”
Dreadaeleon replied by holding up his hand. Three breaths. The tremors set in. Bralston nodded. Dreadaeleon did not relent, even when the tremors became worse and the electric sparks began building on his fingers. Bralston glared at him.
“That’s enough.”
“No, it isn’t.”
The tremor encompassed his entire arm, electricity crackling and spitting before loosing itself in an erratic web of lightning that raked against the wall of the hut where Bralston had once been. The Librarian, having sidestepped neatly, regarded the wall smoldering with flames. He drew in a sharp breath and exhaled, a white cloud of frost smothering the flames beneath it.
When he looked back up, Dreadaeleon was holding his arm to his chest and gritting his teeth.
“The Decay is getting worse,” he said, “at a far more advanced rate than has ever been documented. I can’t control anything about me, least of all my abilities.”
“Hence our departure to Cier’Djaal,” Bralston replied. “Once we can get you to the Venarium, we can—”
“Do not say cure me.”
“I was not going to. There is no cure for the Decay.”
“Don’t say help me.”
“There is little help for it.”
“Then why are we going?” Dreadaeleon demanded. “Why am I going there for any reason but to die so you can harvest my bones to be made into merroskrit?”
“As you say, you’re advancing at a progressed rate. Beyond the harvesting, we could learn from—”
“Let me learn from it, instead!” Dreadaeleon all but screamed. “Let me try to figure out how this works.”
“There is no ‘how this works’ to the Decay, concomitant.”
“This isn’t any normal Decay. I felt it strongly days ago, when we were first shipwrecked on Teji. But that night when we swept into Sheraptus’s ship, I was . . . the power . . .” His eyes lit up at the memory. “When I was there to save Asper, when I . . . when I felt what I did, I could control it. I could do more than control it. My theory holds weight, Librarian. Magic is as much a part of us as emotion, why wouldn’t emotions affect our magic?”
“Concomitant . . .” Bralston said with a sigh.
“And with these days? With all the tension between my companions and I?” He shook his arm at Bralston. “With what just happened? It only adds more weight to my theory! Emotions affect magic and I can—”
“You can do nothing but your duty,” Bralston snapped suddenly. His eyes burned against his dark skin. “Your companions are adventurers, concomitant: criminals on their best day. You are a member of the Venarium. You have no obligations to them beyond what I, as your senior, say you do. And I say you are going to die, very soon and very painfully.
“And I will not watch you languish in their—” he thrust a finger toward the door, “—company. I will not watch you die with no one but criminal scum to look on helplessly as they wait for the last breath to leave you before they can rifle your body and feed it to the sharks.” He inhaled deeply, regaining some composure. “Coarse as it may seem, this is protocol for a reason, Dreadaeleon. Whatever else the Venarium might do once the Decay claims your body, we are your people. We know how to take care of you in your final days.”
Dreadaeleon said nothing, staring down at his arm. It began to tremble once more. He focused to keep it down.
“When do we leave, then?”
“By the end of today,” Bralston replied. “As soon as I conclude business on the island.”
“With whom? The Venarium has no sway out in the Reaching Isles.”
“The Venarium holds sway anywhere there is a heretic. Even if Sheraptus is gone, we are duty-bound to make certain that none of his taint remains.”
“Lenk agrees with you,” Dreadaeleon said, sighing. “That’s why he’s had Denaos on interrogation duty.”
“Denaos . . .” Bralston whispered the name more softly than he would whisper death’s. “Where is he conducting this . . . interrogation?”
“In another hut at the edge of the village,” Dreadaeleon replied. “But he doesn’t want to be—”
He looked up. Bralston was gone. And he was alone.
THREE
THE ETIQUETTE OF BLOODSHED
It always seemed to begin with fire.
As it had begun in Steadbrook, that village he once called home that no one had ever heard of and no one ever would. Fire had been there, where it had all begun. Fire was still there, years later, every time Lenk closed his eyes.
It licked at him now as it consumed the barns and houses around him, as it sampled the slow-roasted dead before giving away all pretenses of being civilized and messily devoured skin, cloth, and wood in great red gulps. It belched, cackled at its own crudeness, and reached out to him with sputtering hands. The fire wanted him to join them; in feast or in frolic, it didn’t matter.
Lenk was concerned with the dead.
He walked among them, saw faces staring up at him. Man. Woman. Old man’s beard charred black and skin crackling. Through smoke-covered mirrors, they looked like him. He didn’t remember their names.
He looked up, found that the night sky had moved too fast and the earth was hurrying to keep up. He was far away from Steadbrook now, that world left on another earth smoldered black. Wood was under his feet now, smoldering with the same fire that razed the mast overhead. A ship. A memory.
A different kind of fire.
This one didn’t care about him. This fire ate in resentful silence, consuming sail and wood and dying in the water rising up beneath him. Again, Lenk paid no attention. He was again concerned with the faces, the faces that meant something to him.
The faces of the traitors.
Denaos, dark-eyed; Asper, sullen; Dreadaeleon, arrogant; Gariath, inhuman. They loomed out of the fire at him. They didn’t ask him if he was hot. He was rather cold, in fact, as cold as the sword that had appeared in his hand. They didn’t ask him about that, either. They turned away, one by one. They showed their necks to him.
And he cut them down, one by one, until one face remained.
Kataria.
Green-eyed.
Full of treason.
She didn’t show him her neck. He couldn’t very well cut her head off when she was looking right at him. His eyes stared into her.
Blue eyes.
Full of hate.
It was his eyes she stared into. It wasn’t his hands that wrapped themselves around her throat. It wasn’t his voice that said this was right. It wasn’t his blood that flowed into his fingers, caused his bones to shiver as they strained to warm themselves in her throat.
But these were his eyes, her eyes. As the world burned down around them and sank into a callous sea, their eyes were full of each other.
He shut his eyes. When he opened them again, he was far below the sea. A fish, bloated and spiny and glassy-eyed stared at him, fins wafting gently as it bobbed up and down in front of him.
“So, anyway,” he said, “that’s basically how it all happened.”
The fish reared back, seeming to take umbrage at his breaking of the tranquil silence. It turned indignantly and sped away, disappearing into the curtains of life emerging from the reef.
“Rude.”
“Well, what did you expect?”
He turned and the woman was seated upon a sphere of wrinkled coral. Her head was tilted toward him.
“I am talking and breathing while several feet underwater.”
“You don’t seem surprised by that,” she said.
“This sort of thing happens to me a lot.” He tapped his brow. “The voices in my head tend to change things. It didn’t seem all that unreasonable that they might make me talk with a fish.” He looked at her intently. “You should know all this, shouldn’t you?”
“Why would I?”
“Can’t you read my thoughts?”
“Not exactly.”
“All the other ones have been able to.”
“I’m not a voice in your head,” she replied.
Amongst everything else in . . . whatever this was, that was the most believable. Her voice came from the water, in the cold current that existed solely between them. It swirled around him, through him, everywhere but within him.
“What are you, then?” he asked.
“I am just like you.”
“Not just like me.”
“Well, no, obviously. I don’t want to murder my friends.”
“You said you couldn’t—”
“I didn’t, you showed me.” She leapt off the coral, scattering a school of red fish as she landed neatly. A cloud of sand rose, drifted away on a current that would not touch her. “And before that, you told me.”
“When?”
“When you cried out,” she said, turning to walk away. “I’ve been hearing you for a while now. There aren’t a lot of voices anymore, so I hear the few that scream pretty clearly.”
As she walked farther away, the sea became intolerably warm. The cold current followed her and so did he. He didn’t see when she stopped beside the craggy coral, and he had to skid to a halt. She didn’t even look up at him as she peered into a black hole within the coral.
“Voices?”
“Two of them,” she said, reaching into the black hole. “Always two of them. One in pain, one always crying out, one weeping bitterly and always saying ‘no, no, no.’ That is the voice I follow. That is the one that’s faint.”
She winced as a tremor ran along her arm. She withdrew it and the eel that had clamped its jaws onto her fingers. It writhed angrily as she brought her hand about its slender neck and brought it up to her face to stare into its white eyes.
“And the other?” Lenk asked.
“Always louder, always cold and black. It doesn’t speak to me so much as speak to mine, speak to the cold inside of me.”
He stared at her, the question forming on his tongue, even though he already knew the answer. He had to ask. He had to hear her say it.
“What does it tell you to do?” he asked.
She looked at him. Her fingers clenched. The snapping sound was short. The eel hung limply in her hands, its tail curled up, up, seeking the sun as she clenched its lifeless body.
“To kill,” she said simply.
Their eyes met each other, peering deeper than eyes had a right to. It was as if each one sought to pry open the other’s head and peer inside and see what each one’s frigid voice was muttering to them.
He could feel the cold creeping up his spine. He knew what his was telling him.
“So,” he said softly, reaching for a sword that wasn’t there, “you’re here to—”
“Kill you?” Her smile was not warm. “No.” She released the eel and let it drift away. “It’s not in my nature.”
He rubbed his head. “I don’t mean to be rude, but this is about the time I start losing patience with the other voices in my head, too, so could you kindly tell me why you are here?”
“Because, Lenk, you’re about to kill yourself.”
“The thought had occurred. I’m just worried that hell will be much worse than . . .” He gestured around the reef. “You know, this.”
“What makes you so sure there’s a hell?”
“Because I’ve seen what comes out of it.”
“Demons aren’t made in hell. They’re made by hell.” She leveled a finger at him. “The kind of hell that you’re going through.”
“I don’t—”
“You do.” She spoke cold, sharp, with enough force to send the fish swirling into hiding. Color died, leaving grim, gray corals and endless blue. “You hear it every time you think you’re alone, you see it every time you close your eyes. You feel it in your blood, you feel it sharing your body. It never talks loud enough for others to hear, but it deafens you, and if they could hear what it says, you know they’d cry out like you do.
“Kill. Kill,” she hissed. “You obey. Just to make it stop. But no matter how much your sword drinks, it will never be enough.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “If you kill them, Lenk, if you kill her, it still won’t be enough.”
Her voice echoed through water, through his blood. She wasn’t just talking to him. Something else had heard her.
And it tried to numb him, reaching out to cool his blood and turn his bones to ice. It only made the chill of her voice all the more keen, made the warmth of the ocean grow ever more intolerable. He wanted to cry out, he wanted to collapse, he wanted to let go and see if the current could carry him far enough that he might drift forever.
Those were not things he could do. Not anymore. So he inclined his head, just enough to avoid her gaze, and whispered.
“Yeah. That makes sense.”
“Then you know?” she asked. “Do you know how to fight it? That you have to fight it?”
Her voice was hard, but falsely so, something that had been brittle to begin with and hammered with a mallet in an awkward grip. Not hard enough to squelch the hope in her voice. She asked not for his sake alone.
He hated to answer.
“I’m not afraid of it, anymore.”
He tilted his head back up, turning his gaze skyward. The sun was distant, a shimmering blur on a surface so far away as to be mythical.
“I used to be,” he said. “But it says so many things. I tried ignoring it and I felt fear. I tried arguing and I felt pain. But now, I’m not afraid. I don’t hurt. I’m numb.”
“If you can safely ignore it, then is there a problem? If you don’t feel the need to kill—”
“I do.” He spoke with a casualness that unnerved himself. “The voice, when it speaks, tells me about how they abandoned me, how they betrayed me. It tells me they have to die for us to be safe. I try to ignore it . . . but it’s hard.”
“You said you were numb, that you weren’t afraid.”
“It’s not the voice that scares me.” He met her gaze now. He smiled faintly. “It’s that I’m beginning to agree with it.”
Denaos looked at himself in the blade. No scars, still. More wrinkles than there used to be. A pair of ugly bags under eyes that he chose not to look at, but no scars.
He had that, at least.
Appearance was one point of pride amongst many for him. There were other things he had hoped he would be remembered for: his taste in wine, an ear for song, and a way with women that sat firmly between the realms of poetry and witchcraft.
And killing, his conscience piped up. Don’t forget killing.
And killing. He was not bad at it.
Still, he thought as he surveyed himself, if none of those could be his legacy, looks would have to suffice.
And yet, as he saw the man in the blade, he wondered if perhaps he might have to discount that, too. His was a face used to masks: sharp, perceptive eyes over a malleable mouth ready to smile, frown, or spit curses as needed, all set within firm, square features.
Those eyes were sunken now, dark seeds buried in dark soil, hidden under long hair poorly kempt. His features were caked with stubble, grime, a dried glistening of liquid he hadn’t bothered to clean away. And his mouth twitched, not quite sure what it was supposed to do.
Fitting. He didn’t know who this mask was supposed to portray.
Looks, then, were not to be what he was remembered for. His eyes drifted to the far side of the table, to the bottle long drained. His preferences in alcohol, too, had broadened to “anything short of embalming fluid, providing nothing else is at hand; past that, it’s all fine.”
He would not be remembered as a handsome man, then. Nor a man of liquids or songs. What else was left?
The glistening of steel answered. He looked at the blade, its edge everything he wasn’t: sharpened, honed, precise. An example, three fingers long and with a polished wooden hilt and a taste for blood.
