The Empire's Ruin, page 55
Akiil turned in time to see Hugel shake his head. Instead of his Aedolian armor, the man was wearing a filthy tabard and shabby cloak, a half-decent disguise for someone wanting to walk the streets of the Quarter unnoticed. The bright steel in his hand, however, was unmistakable.
“I’m not your messenger, scum,” he replied. “And my employer is Adare hui’Malkeenian, prophet of Intarra and Emperor of Annur, bright be the days of her life. If you threaten her again, I will open your throat where you stand.”
The Captain frowned. “What does the Emperor want with a thieving monk?”
The question sounded like a riddle, one to which Akiil had long ago forgotten the answer.
35
Pain.
Then sunlight spangled across that pain.
She had no idea where she was or, for the space of many long breaths, who.
There was the sun like the head of a bronze spike hammered into the sky.
There, in the corner of her eye, the shard of a mountain peak.
There the ghost of the crescent moon in the bottomless blue.
And wrapped around her like a heavy cloak—agony.
She tried to form a word but had no mouth. For a moment, panic took her. Then she felt her lips peel apart, heard her moan drain out into the wind.
Blood.
She gagged on the taste of it.
It was dried blood that had sealed her mouth, blood plastering shut one of her eyes, blood sticking her clothes to her skin.
She forced herself to her knees. Pain threatened to fold her mind back in on itself, to toss her into darkness once more, but she closed her eyes and fought it down. When it had dimmed to a low scream, she opened her eyes once more and saw the bird, the kettral, dead—not just dead, slaughtered—the great bulk of its body slumped across the broken stone. She stared at it awhile, numb, dumb, lost.
Impossible.
The thought rose like a glimmering bubble through the murk.
Nothing could kill kettral.
Except …
She glanced down at her hands. One of them still clutched the bloody knife.
Oh Hull. The memory washed over her. Holy Hull.
The god of darkness did not respond. No one responded. When she twisted her head to look around, she found the mountains empty. There was only the dead kettral and, hunched over it, a half-dead woman.
She remembered her name at last, the name and the life that went along with it.
Gwenna Sharpe.
* * *
By nightfall, she’d managed to drag herself down from the scree into the fringes of the forest. It was, she told herself, a warmer place to die, if nothing else. Already, though, she knew she wouldn’t die. Her body throbbed, but she could feel her injuries knitting painfully closed, the bruise fading from her brain, the strength seeping back into her battered flesh. It struck her, somehow, as unfair. When she left the cave to go after the bird she hadn’t expected to survive, to make it, to have to keep going, but there she was, huddled beneath the low-hanging boughs, still breathing. Worse, the fire that had consumed her higher on the mountain seemed to have burned itself out. When she searched inside for all that rage and loathing, she found only a great gulf, one she had no idea how to fill.
“You could start with food, you idiot,” she muttered.
Though she could see well enough by the starlight filtering down through the branches, could hear small things scuttling through the brush, she had no strength to hunt, not even to set a snare, and so she leaned back against the rough bark of the tree, pulled her knees to her chest, heaped the brown needles around her as high as she could, wrapped her arms around her legs, then tucked her face down into the warm pocket of air. As shelter went, it wasn’t much—barely more than nothing—but it would be enough.
At dawn, stiff from her injuries and the night’s cold, she forced herself upright, then climbed back up the mountainside to the carcass of the dead bird. Grimly, she set to work. Without her rage and shame to propel her, the labor seemed to take ages, but at last she reached the liver, cut free a dozen long strips, laid them across a nearby boulder to dry, then sat down to eat one. The raw, bitter meat threatened to gag her, but she forced herself to keep eating. It would keep her alive, though what, exactly, was the point of that she had no idea.
From her seat on the boulder, she could see back up to the high peaks where the kettral nested—maybe a dozen miles away—and down the valley. Past the mouth of that valley, far beyond what she could see, lay the hills, the flatlands, and finally the strange abandoned city with its ziggurat, its empty homes and markets, its prisons carved from the rock, and its harbor, where the Daybreak swung at anchor, waiting.
She wondered briefly if Jonon and his men were searching for her, then discarded the thought. Now that the admiral had the eggs in hand, Gwenna herself added no more value to the expedition. Besides, anyone who saw the struggle between her and the kettral, anyone who watched the two of them plummet out of the sky, would have assumed her dead. A more sentimental captain might have ordered a search for her body, but Jonon wouldn’t waste days hacking around the primeval woods of southern Menkiddoc, even for someone he didn’t hate.
It was a strange relief to know she was alone and would be left alone. From her perch on the boulder, she gazed out over the valley. Despite Kiel’s dire stories, the land at this southern end of the continent was healthy, if strange. She had her belt knife and a fire-striker, not to mention a whole kettral carcass full of bones from which she could fashion spears and bows. The forest below was filled with life. It had been years since her wilderness survival training, but she remembered some, enough. Within a month, she could have a snug cabin built—she studied the contours of the valley—there, where the grade gentled and the river slowed, deepening into pools.
As she sat, gazing out over that uninhabited world, the future blossomed inside her. Forget wilderness survival—her goal wouldn’t be simply to survive. She’d left her family farm for the Kettral when she was a child, but she remembered enough to grow crops, to raise livestock. The people who’d lived in the farmsteads out on the plains would have left behind seeds, grain, plants suited to the place and climate. It would be a matter of a week or two to trek down there, scour the homes, and return. She could, of course, simply move into one of those cottages, but no. She’d grown up on a farm in a valley at the foot of the mountains, and returning to one felt … right. Clearing the fields would be a bitch, of course, she’d need to scavenge or fashion a decent ax, but as she imagined the labor she found herself smiling.
No one to kill. Better yet, no one to save. No one relying on her but herself. It would be dangerous, obviously. Plenty of ways to die on a farm, especially all alone out as the ass end of the world, but so what? If she died, she died. The fate of empires didn’t hang on the lives of solitary farmers.…
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, idiot,” she muttered, shaking her head.
The first thing—before clearing fields or raising stock or building a cabin—was taking everything she could from the body of the kettral.
The talons were longer than her arm and strong as steel, the light bones of the wings made the best bows in the world, and the bird had enough down to stuff a dozen mattresses. Before going to work, however, she made her way up to the creature’s head, laid a hand on its beak, gazed into the sightless eye.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Thank you.”
* * *
By nightfall, she’d stripped away as much as she could carry—two spans of bone, two talons, a dozen lengths of long, ropy tendon, and the rest of the liver. It would be enough to get her out of the mountains, at least. A small start on a new life.
She lashed the lot of it together, hefted the bundle onto her shoulder to test the weight, then, satisfied that she’d be able to carry it, set it down, leaned back against the boulder. Her breath steamed in the cold night air. Her body ached in a thousand places. It was different work from her Kettral training—all bending, and kneeling, and cutting. Peasant work. Farmer’s work. It felt good.
Her stomach rumbled, and she took one of the strips of liver. It would be nice to get a fire going once she was back down in the trees, to start cooking the ’Kent-kissing stuff before shoving it in her mouth, but for now the liver was giving her strength, despite the bitter iron taste.
As she chewed, she studied the stars. Those would take some time to get used to. Already, though, she found herself sorting them into shapes. There was something that might have been a plow. And over there, a sickle, the star at its tip glinting wickedly. And then, if she tilted her head back, a pair of crossed swords, a fortress tower, a warship.…
A glimmer down near the head of the valley caught her eye, a faint light maybe fifteen miles distant, shifting, flaring, falling with some wind Gwenna didn’t feel.
That would be Jonon, headed back to the ship. Making decent time, actually, considering they had the eggs to carry, not to mention Rat. Something inside Gwenna twisted uneasily at the thought of the girl. Who would be minding her on the trek back to the ship? Cho Lu or Pattick would be the best choice; she trusted them—as much as she trusted anyone, at least. Rat might even learn some more Annurian, start to confide in them. If Jonon had given her to Vessik, however, or Chent, or Lurie …
Gwenna put the liver down. It was too bitter, suddenly, to continue.
“Not for me to decide,” she reminded herself.
In a week or so, they would be back on the ship—Jonon, Pattick, Chent, Rat, all of them. They’d weigh anchor, set the sails, and disappear over the horizon. It was sad what had happened to the girl—first abandoned by her people, then taken prisoner—but sad shit happened every fucking day. Even as Gwenna sat there, someone was dying somewhere, probably thousands of someones. While the liver churned in her stomach, orphans back in Annur were starving, girls and boys not much older than Rat were selling themselves to sailors for a few filthy coppers, someone was getting murdered, someone else was getting raped. At that very moment, somewhere in the world, some drunk son of a bitch was thrashing his wife, getting ready to start in on his son. While those strange stars swept silently overhead, people with the yellow pox were choking on their own phlegm, soldiers were burning down some miserable town or other, people were screaming, sobbing, begging, dying.
You couldn’t think about it, all the world’s suffering, or it would choke you. If you stopped to ponder all that misery, you’d never start moving again.
But I don’t have to be part of it, Gwenna reminded herself. Not out here. Not anymore.
She forced herself to raise the meat back to her lips, made herself tear off a chunk, chew, swallow. She’d need the strength if she was going to carry her load down the mountain, not to mention building her cabin.
She took another bite.
Trying to stop all that suffering—it was like standing in the river hoping to block the current. The only people who attempted it were the stupid, the mad, and those too puffed up with their own pride to see how small they were. Well, if the past year had taught Gwenna anything, it was her own meager measure. Even if she went after Rat, then what? She couldn’t save the girl. Jonon would just toss both of them in the brig. Or worse, her own return would somehow make things worse. Wasn’t that, after all, the lesson of the Purple Baths? Wasn’t that the lesson of the sea battle against the Manjari? Wasn’t that the lesson the whole world was teaching every ’Shael-spawned day to anyone with the sense to listen?
“You cannot fix it, you bitch,” she said out loud.
The campfire at the valley’s mouth had gone out.
“Even if you wanted to, you can’t catch them now. They’ve got a fifteen-mile start on you. You’re in no shape to walk all that way, let alone run. Even if you were, you’d have to travel at night, probably all night, probably several nights in a row, and for what? You don’t even like that vicious kid, and if you did, it wouldn’t matter.”
Even as she was talking, however, she found herself rising painfully to her feet, stretching her knees, testing the tendons of her ankles, measuring the miles by the light of the stars. She’d run more miles in her life. A lot more miles. Not that that made it any easier.
“Fuck,” she muttered as she took the first painful step. “Fuck,” with the next. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” as she made her way down the steep slope toward the forest, the valley floor, toward Jonon and Rat, toward the Daybreak, and Annur, back again, back a-fucking-gain toward the whole shitty, miserable, unfixable world.
36
“I can’t do it.”
Bien could have been talking about anything—running up the Arena stands, Goatface’s new spear form, rolling out of bed in the morning—but the mix of dread and self-loathing in her voice told Ruc everything he needed to know. She was talking about her power. Or rather, her lack of it.
“I do everything Talal tells me, but I just can’t…”
She shook her head, frustration baking off of her.
The two of them had been at it every night for weeks. They waited until after the others were asleep, then spent hours hunched over the table, searching for Bien’s well. Ruc usually took up a post at the window. In theory he was making sure they weren’t observed or overheard. In truth he was trying to give them as much space as possible. Them and himself. It was strange, watching Bien offer up her secrets so completely to this man she barely knew, telling him things that she’d hidden from Ruc their entire lives. It hurt, like something inside of him had torn open and was bleeding slowly into the space between his organs. He could bear the pain, though, if it meant she learned something that could keep her safe.
Evidently she had not.
“We shouldn’t talk about it out here,” he said quietly.
She’d taken advantage of the afternoon break to beckon him out of the yard, into their hidden gap between the mess hall and storage shed. The deep shade gave the illusion of privacy, but Ruc could hear the other Worthy laughing and cursing beyond the walls, just a few dozen paces away.
“I know.”
“If Talal can’t figure it out…” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Bien. I don’t know anything about this stuff.”
The disappointment in her eyes was sharp, unexpected. “I don’t want you to figure it out. I just wanted to talk to you about it. I—”
He raised a hand, cutting her off.
He could just make out, through the bulk of the warehouse, two red shapes. They were hazy, but obviously human, and they were coming closer, approaching at a lazy saunter.
Bien turned.
“What—”
“The better question might be who,” replied Rooster, stepping around the corner. He winked at Ruc, nodded to Bien. “Hello, lovebirds.”
Snakebones followed a moment later, glanced around the shadowy nook, then laughed. “Didn’t we fuck someone here back in the spring?”
Rooster tapped at his lower lip thoughtfully, then nodded. “That skinny boy, I believe. Lom Nao?”
The woman hooted. “Lom! Yes! He was so sweaty.”
“It was a warm evening.”
“Whatever happened to Lom?” the woman asked, shaking her head.
Rooster shrugged. “I put a dent in his skull a while back.”
“What’d you do that for? I like sweaty boys.”
“Plenty more where he came from.” Rooster nodded cheerfully toward Ruc and Bien.
Ruc glanced past them. They appeared to be alone, their normal entourage of thugs and sycophants abandoned back in the yard. That might have evened the scales somewhat, except that Bien, despite Goatface’s training, wasn’t a fighter. Worse, the pair carried weapons: a bronze knife hung from Rooster’s belt while Snakebones leaned forward on a long fishing spear. In theory, those weapons should have been locked away until the high holy days, but the theory was only as solid as the guards enforcing it, and the guards were nowhere in sight.
Rooster pointed at Ruc, then made a slow spinning gesture. “Turn around, love boy. Let’s see what we have to work with here.”
Snakebones cocked her head to the side, waiting.
Ruc didn’t move.
“We haven’t harmed you,” Bien said, her voice tight but steady.
“Haven’t harmed us?” Rooster smiled as he mimicked the words. “You haven’t harmed us. My sweet, doe-eyed darling, what an unbecoming standard you set for yourself. I expect so much more from the two of you than the absence of harm.”
“Sweat,” Snakebones said, her eyes narrowed to slits. “I want your sweat.”
Rooster made a face. “Not everyone shares your tastes, Bones. You know I prefer a certain cleanliness in my lovers.”
“We’re not your lovers,” Bien said.
The man nodded amiably. “Not yet, of course! But that can be remedied.”
“Not ever,” she growled.
Snakebones chuckled.
Rooster frowned. “And here I was given to believe that the love of the priests of Eira extended to all.”
“The love of the heart,” Bien replied grimly, “is not the love of the body.”
“Ah!” He clapped his hands together like a child receiving a gift, then tossed an arm around the shoulders of the woman at his side. She was at least a head taller, but the difference didn’t seem to trouble him. “You see? That’s a start! Maybe we haven’t got to the bodies yet, but we have their…” He cocked his head to the side. “How did she put it? The love of their hearts.”
Snakebones bared her teeth. “It’s not their hearts I’m interested in.”
Rooster shrugged. “Well, the heart is inside the body. I’m sure if we open them up, rummage around enough, all that love will come gushing out.”
“Ooh,” she purred. “Let’s make them gush.”
She lingered on the last word, then laughed gaily, nipped her companion on the ear, and gave a long lick up the side of his smooth-shaven cheek.
“I’m going to start screaming now,” Bien announced matter-of-factly.
