A Fray of Furies, page 22
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
“Nonsense!” he laughed. “Take it from me, there’s a market for everything. And I’d be happy to give you some… direction.”
Waiting for him to draw a bead on her was suicide. She would relinquish both spear and cloak, she decided, and rush him. Force him to jerk and fire at a rolling target. If she were fast – and lucky – she could disembowel him before the bowstring stilled.
With a good knife and good sense–
Dismissive of her raised chin, leaden fear infected her legs…
“Civilization at last!”
They both froze.
The krin padded from the forest, clad only in its caked kilt and its painted skin. Its hair was wild, its arms muddied up to the elbows. Half its face was bloodied by whatever it had run down for its midday meal. Oblivious, its smile appeared absolutely bestial.
She’d never been so happy to see it.
The mule, Nomparal, disagreed. Not bred to the Hunt, it got two nostrils-full of krin-stink and did what any sane animal would do – tried to bolt. Axles balked with juddering force, jostled pots and pans cried in clanging cacophony.
“Whoa!” Ehwan wailed as his wagon threatened upset. “Whoa, you stupid ass, whoa!”
Bow abandoned, in favor of a double handful of traces, the braying beast was wrestled to a standstill. Its flight foiled, it rolled a white eye at the krin, visibly trembling.
It shied as the krin took a step nearer, “You’ve dropped–”
“You keep your damned distance!” the peddler commanded.
Taken aback, it complied.
“Smart ass,” she complimented, smiling her relief.
“And you!” the peddler shrilled, his good cheer gone. “If you have no coin, get you gone! I’ve no time for penniless urchins.”
“I’ve missed something again, haven’t I?” the krin surmised.
“Highway robbery,” she confirmed. “Ehwan give directions.”
“No, I bloody well won’t, you tick-ridden tots!” the trader spat. “And don’t you slander me! What do you know of commerce?”
“My companion meant no offense, master,” the krin quelled. “As you can tell, Common is not her mother tongue.”
She knew the krin to be bashful of its cityman body. That’s not why she tossed it its cloak. Even she thought it looked barbarous in the bulkbear fur. And sight of it was unbalancing the trader.
“I– What is that?” the man interrupted himself, suddenly rapt.
“Cloak,” she supplied archly.
“I can see that,” he sneered. “What pelt? What animal?”
“Bulkbear,” she shrugged, not knowing the traders’ term.
“Talpida Daho, according Burmin’s Bestiary.”
They cast equally stunned looks at the krin. It cradled the fur in the crook of its arm, fondling the horn-hard neck-scales.
“A ‘great burrower’ in common parlance,” it concluded.
She felt her jaw drop.
“The man-eater?” Ehwan licked his lips. “You are sure?”
“Positive. I was there when it was skinned.”
“A great burrower,” the trader repeated, sounding somewhat breathless. “That’s rare. Do you happen to have its skull as well?”
“Some smoked meat is all,” the krin shook its head in denial.
“And claws,” she added, rousing herself. “From forearms.”
She’d been saving them to make the krin a collar that would clatter when it moved. It was too hard to keep track of it otherwise.
Ehwan absently comforted his trembling mule, repeatedly patting its eye closed. He seemed lost is some internal calculation.
“How much do you want for it?” he demanded at last.
* * *
The polished marble reflected Adjunct High Inquisitor Torvan Mattanuy’s scowl back at him. The Chapter secretary, starting up from behind his desk, met that scowl head on and swallowed whatever he’d been about to say. Eyeing the dreaded black sash bearing down on him, the man shrunk silently in his seat.
Deigning not to notice, Mattanuy threw open the doors to the Imperial Chapter of Metalworkers’ main floor himself.
The morning’s reports had left a sour taste in his mouth.
Confused accounts were coming from a subjugation squad sent to far-off Genla province. Reading those missives, he could swear those witch-hunting halfwits were penning their reports drunk.
And then there was – he ground his teeth – the official request from Keeper Justin Wisenpraal – the Temple’s diplomatic envoy to the Renali capital of Keystone.
A request for the full transcripts of the Butcher Murders no less!
The temerity of the man!
Unremarked, aproned workers and apprentices scurried from the path of his fury as he wove among their workstations.
Of course the request had ended up on Mattanuy’s desk. He’d been spearheading the Butcher investigation for years. The only person who knew more of that distasteful incident than he – he was certain – was the Keeper himself.
Since the man had masterminded the entire thing.
A necromantic sorcerer, suckling at the Mother Temple’s very breast. The arrogance of it almost beggared belief.
And Mattanuy was close to proving it.
He’d not yet fitted all the pieces in place. He did not know how the Keeper had concocted a ritual to turn his ward into a leashed denizen. But how else did a stripling boy best two dockers and leave them mauled about? So far, none but Mattanuy had made the connection. He intended to keep it that way.
His previous attempt at brokering the Keeper’s kidnapping from Renali soil had failed, hampering his forward progress. He’d quite been looking forward to questioning the man, too. He’d never interrogated such an accomplished empath.
Though he abhorred the heat and humdrum of industry, he found the immediate hammering to his liking. It was easy to imagine the metal’s pained squealing and hissing as coming from sinners’ throats. It put him in mind of the museum installation of torture implements, lovingly kept in the Inquisitori vaults. Perhaps it was the nearness of the smelters but he felt a warm glow.
Though the Keeper was momentarily beyond his reach, that did not mean he couldn’t foil the fiend’s machinations. He would carefully redact any useful information from the requested reports. And he would send them by way of a special courier…
Though he’d never been here, he made his way unerringly to a somewhat more silent corner of the great cavern. In a forgotten switchback squatted a wooden shed, looking decidedly out of place. Its stovepipe chimney belched greasy smoke.
Not bothering to knock, he pushed into a beaver’s den of rude furniture and mismatched jumble. Oddments and cut-offs crowded every surface, all of it covered in an oily patina of rank rust.
A single lantern outlined a hunched back, haloing a shock of silver hair. Thick, crabbed fingers crawled among unnamed tools.
“Subat Sarvillo,” he identified. “Your services are required.”
A critically distressed chair creaked as its owner turned. Thick lenses in a brass prism peered at him. Frazzled whiskers lent a mole-like appearance. A sooty hand rose to twiddle some knobs. Dull cataracts came into sharper focus, blinking myopically.
“Don’t work no more,” the creature told him, voice thick with coal dust and disuse. It turned back to its tinkering.
Ignoring this, he approached, drawing a rolled scroll from his sleeve. He rested its crisp edge against the mole’s jugular.
“How soon can you have this ready?” he demanded.
“Don’t work no more,” the creature said, more forcefully.
“Subat Sarvillo,” he quoted from memory. “Once Principal Smith of the Chapter of Metalworkers. Most daring innovator. Credited with the smelting recipe for Imperial storm steel. The mind behind the mail mill. Inventor of the coveted bright plate.
“Reduced an anvil to a puddle in his apprenticeship. Expelled. Recalled a month later and confirmed for a masterclass.
“Blows up the chapter’s secondary smelting furnace, injuring two apprentices. Expelled. Reinstated half a year later. Given control of an improved smelter of his own design.
“Burns down his workshop, claiming the old chapter house and the lives of two fellow masters. Expelled. Eventually reinstated in the vaunted position of Principal Smith.”
“Don’t work no more,” the failed smith grumbled desperately.
“And we both know why,” he bent to whisper in the man’s ear. “Because, seven years ago, an entire dormitory of apprentices inexplicably died in their sleep. The work of witches, of course. And, perhaps, an ill-thought adjustment to the flu system?”
“How–” the man swallowed heavily. “How d’you know?”
“I am Inquisitori. Sin is our business,” he inhaled sharply. “And guilt has a stench, all of its own...”
With trembling hands, the erstwhile master unrolled the scroll.
He stood back, letting Sarvillo absorb the commission. He studied the little prison while he waited. It was papered all over with grandiose designs and drawings. Scriptures of the steel god. He shook his head. Some things were just too rare to throw away, he reflected, looking at Sarvillo. Even when they were broken.
“Can’t forge eversteel,” the creature cautioned. “Not even me.”
“But you can make a replica. True enough to fool the eye.”
The whiskered head bobbed.
“How quickly can you have it ready?”
“Three weeks,” it allowed.
“Weeks?” He’d expected such a forgery to demand months.
“This kind of alloy’s tricky. It don’t take well to the mold. Might do two or even three castings before I gets it right...”
The broken master seemed to sink into himself, muttering unintelligible words such as ‘flux’ and ‘dross’ and ‘scale’.
“Three weeks, then,” he agreed.
“…stay in the solution a week at least, to get the sheen right…”
Sighing, he made his way toward the exit.
“…handle will be tricky … got some shark skin left over…”
He detested working with the laborer class. Especially when they weren’t properly strapped down. But he’d go to any lengths to thwart Keeper Justin Wisenpraal. Leaving such a holy relic in the hands of that heretic was more than sacrilegious. It was stupid. Who knew what new and horrible purpose the man might concoct for the sword of a founding saint..?
His feet stuck in the doorway, waiting while his brain stitched the clues together:
Three weeks.
Left over.
He turned slowly back to the failed smith.
The mold.
“You’ve already made such a replica. For someone else.”
The monologue trailed off. As good as an admission.
“It seems,” he drawled, reversing direction, “you and I are due a longer conversation. On the nature of sin.”
Chapter 8 – Into the Fire
He’d ordered the horses unsaddled and untethered before they’d set out from Hedrick. The mountain terrain was too rough and the memory of the dead oxen, yoked to their plough, too fresh to do otherwise.
He’d also penned a painstakingly brief note to the Temple.
Hedrick razed by witch. Tracking north. Success unlikely.
He’d chewed a long time over whether to add, Send relief.
In the end, the size of the onionskin scroll had precluded it. He’d sent it up with their fattest carrier pigeon. Then he’d opened the cage, a little wistfully, and watched the rest wing after it.
His own duty lay nearer to hand.
He’d worried that the witch’s trail would peter out in the scree of the mountain’s shoulder. But when her fire finally fizzled, her footprints were easy enough to follow in the snow.
It was an unforgiving trek and they were ill equipped, despite the odds and ends they’d scrounged from the village. They ate as they went. If they dared sit, sleep snuck up on them. They’d lost Brother Maj like that, in the woods: cheek bulging with bread, arrested mid-chew.
He was determined not to share in that fate. He’d taken to slapping himself in the face, hard, to stay alert. But with the rising cold and his rapidly numbing flesh, efficacy waned.
What kept him going was the refusal to fail while Helia’s regard held on his back. Once the sun set… They would not survive another night.
Another slap thumped ineffectively off his cheek. Tasting blood, he turned to check their backtrail. A dozen paces behind him, Brother Rudfis stumbled resolutely. But Brother Dellow had been lagging… and was nowhere to be seen. For a moment, he allowed himself to feel the nearly undeniable pull of the soft snow too. The promise that, if he closed his eyes for just one moment, everything would be alright. Across the span of years, he heard his mother’s off-key lullaby, felt her hand caress his cheek…
It was a measure of both of their exhaustion that Brother Rudfis neither stopped nor asked why he was punching himself in the face.
They trudged onwards. And when the last of the sun slipped from the high peaks, they continued on without a word.
Lack of sleep had untethered his memories. He recalled carrying firewood from the shed as a child, his little arms shaking beneath the strain. His father, carrying thrice the burden in one brawny crook, had smiled to see it. He’d have walked through fire for that smile. He’d borne up manfully, gritting his teeth as his father had added log after log to his load. He’d forged on, even when he could scarcely peek over his pile.
Shaking his head clear of the memory, he scooped a handful of snow and scrubbed it across his face. Cold bit at his cheeks and nose, momentarily clearing his head. He spat pink.
At a change in Rudfis’s panting-pattern, he glanced up. It had been a while since he’d looked anywhere but at his own feet. Rudfis had apparently been doing the same. The inquisitor stood waist-deep in vegetation, arms upraised as though he’d accidentally stumbled into the surf.
The stalks stood swaying, thick as summer wheat and black in the moon’s pale light. Their border ran regular as any planted field, cutting a leagues-long swathe in the white. Whatever they were, they weren’t natural.
“Come, Rudfis,” he quipped, “up the witch’s garden path…”
Exhaustion, apparently, had driven him giddy.
Rudfis peered suspiciously at a flower he pinched, “These might be poisonous.”
“Right,” he agreed. “Dellow, cut us some headscarves from the spare blanket and wet them with–”
“Dellow’s gone,” Rudfis interrupted.
He stared, waiting for the statement to penetrate, to make some sense. Belatedly, he turned to take in their backtrail. They’d trod a single trough through the unforgiving snow and, at its apex, stood only himself and Brother Rudfis.
“Ah,” he recalled. “Well, then, never mind.”
He forced himself in among the stalks. Two distant outcrops promised passage between them. His memories offered another tidbit: his brother, tethered by one ear and trying to stay ahead of their mother’s switch. He smiled. The outcrops didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
It had better be a fast-acting poison, he eyed the flowers, to compete with the bile his brain was belching. To his mind, his body was naught but a distant memory, his hands mere kites on unimaginably long strings. He was too afraid to look down, lest the evidence of actual feet force him to consider the logistics of balance and motion.
He was forgetting something. Something important. Maybe he could ask Rudfis what it was.
“Brother Rud–”
He was alone but for an unbroken expanse of flowers.
All the giddiness fled.
Finally, he allowed the frustrated tears to fall. He knew this to be an overreaction. The reverse swing of a pendulum. That was alright. He did not need to be starched and composed, as the senior inquisitor would have been, when he met the witch. He just needed to stay awake long enough to cave her skull in…
Doggedly, he slogged on.
The transition from overgrown earth to gleaming tiles came as a shock. In the absence of pressing blooms, he overbalanced. Fell. For a long moment, he could think of nothing, save how comfortable he was…
Thought persisted, threading a stubborn needle with numb fingers: he’d reached the witch’s lair.
This small victory drew the ragged ends of his will together.
With a growl, he pushed himself off the sea-green glaze. Ice climbed the walls and rose from the floor to vault high overhead. A deliberate mockery of Helia’s Temple, he saw, complete with columns, niches and naves.
The pagan would answer for her temerity.
His pack was gone. So was his sword breaker. It made no matter. He’d squeeze the life from her with his bare hands.
“Witch!” he bellowed. “Where are you?!”
The sound splintered oddly.
“Shhh!”
He whirled, “Who’s there?” He squinted into the gloom…
There, behind a pillar – a hint of lank hair, a corner of shoulder.
“Deponent! In the name of Helia–!”
“Quiet!” the voice whispered, urgent and thick with fear.
He rounded the spar cautiously: dirty, bare feet; thin ankles; a roughspun smock over up-drawn knees.
The girl-child’s tangled hair hid all but the glint of her eyes.
“She’ll hear you,” the apparition admonished.
“Who?” he demanded, echoing her whisper.
“The witch. She hears everything.”
The memory of his brother, thin and wasted, came unbidden to his mind. He went to one knee, “What’s your name, child?”
She squirmed irritably.
“I’m Brother Nolan,” he offered.
“You’re not from the village,” she accused.
“No,” he confirmed. “I’m a priest, from Tellar.”
An inquisitive twitch, “From the city?”
He nodded, “Are you from Hedrick?”
“Used to be.”
“How long have you been here?”
A careless shrug, “A couple of days. Three, maybe four?”
Days? He frowned. Hedrick had burned weeks ago.
Staring suspiciously, she smeared a handful of her hair aside. She was older than he’d thought. Not a child at all.
