The Broken Tower--A Novel, page 43
The older boys find a long-legged rabbit eating the greens in the garden, put a box over it, go away to fetch a knife. He lifts the box. Chases it away. Hopes it will not come back.
* * *
The fierce running boy’s thin legs poked out of his robes as he ran in a way that was almost funny, but it wouldn’t be funny if he reached the pit and Merrit had to kill him. It wouldn’t be funny if he managed to kill her instead—or Cleric, while Judah was Working in him. Merrit didn’t know what would happen then but didn’t think it would be anything good.
“I’ll be back,” she said to Cleric, who couldn’t hear her anyway, and hoisted herself up out of the pit. She flexed her wrist and the switchknife popped out again, quick and deadly.
Please, boy, don’t make me kill you, she thought, as he ran at her, wild-eyed, murderous.
* * *
Then what?
Older still. Long fingers, bony wrists. New rituals, every morning: the god Eleni finds us through suffering. His first flail, knotted leather now but it would be chains soon enough. Punishment and pain, but when has there not been punishment and pain? At least he holds the lash that strokes his back, this time. He knows when each blow is coming. Twenty boys, all the same age. Twenty bare chests, some sprouting the barest beginnings of hair. Twenty backs, some weeping beads of bright blood. The morning light gentle and gorgeous, catching the blood like rubies.
Hesitation. Judah pressed, gently. Then?
The library. Bitter, oaky smell of ink and dry parchment. Twenty boys, copying scroll after scroll. Twenty shaved heads, twenty spines bent in the same way, twenty hands curled just so around their pens. Twenty shoulders with the same underfed, overworked wiriness, thin ropes of muscle over bones. But one boy, across the room, glows as if lit from within. His hands—the left newly tattooed with the guild mark they all bear—are graceful, his eyelashes thick and dark. Judah can feel the boy who would be Cleric forcing his attention down to the scroll he’s copying, only to feel it drawn up again. To the hands, to the eyelashes.
And once, to eyes as gray as storm clouds, as frank as truth. The instant the two gazes touch, they spring away from each other, as if terrified.
They have good reason to be terrified.
* * *
The boy held his stick like a lance, charging toward Merrit. But her arms were longer than his and she knocked the stick away. “Stop,” she hissed at him. “Go back inside.”
But he merely shrieked and threw himself toward her legs. More boys were running toward her now and absurdly, she almost laughed—all those years of training with Kendzi Baglia, and for what? For fighting off a half dozen children with murder in their eyes. They were not monsters. They were children, defending the only home they knew. The murder in their eyes would kill, just the same.
“Stop!” she yelled at them. “Go back inside!”
They didn’t stop. Merrit readied herself to fight.
* * *
Stop! Go back inside! Judah hears. She thinks it’s Merrit. She can’t pay any attention. She has to find Cleric’s next memory, to set it alongside the others, and when she does she finds
twenty boys sitting in silence, bent over plates of thin porridge. The boy who will be Cleric sits next to the dark-lashed boy on the uncomfortable refectory bench. The gruel is tepid and the dark-lashed boy’s hip against his seems the only warmth in the world. Those scant inches of connection are everything. They are all that matters.
In the garden, clipping herbs, there is a moment. A bladelike leaf crushed between two fingers, an aroma released, the crushed leaf offered as a gift. From that moment on, the woody smell will remind him of this moment, of warm sun and a faint haze of sweat. Thick dark lashes surrounding eyes as gray as storms; eyes that touch the boy who will be Cleric’s eyes. This time they don’t move away.
We are put here on earth to serve Eleni, the guildmaster says. All pain is his gift to us. How easy it is to sink into pleasure, to drown in it. But we must be strong. If there is ecstasy to be found, find it in your own self-deprivation.
* * *
Merrit heard another yell. Out of the corner of her eye saw a figure break away from the knot of fighting men. Slither away, really, down under the blur of weapons: it was Anurak. Merrit knew him. He was scarcely a decade older than the boys attacking her, too young to even have been matched yet. Young enough to remember being a boy himself, maybe, and so he came at the boys with eyes comically wide and mouth distorted by bellowing, waving his sword in a ridiculous way that nobody who’d ever actually been in a swordfight would find at all threatening. He looked as if he was scattering birds off a cornfield. Into the flock of boys he went, and indeed, they scattered. The few he had to hit, he hit with the flat of his sword, enough to knock them back off their feet but not enough to do any serious damage.
And damned if it didn’t work. Merrit had forgotten how easy it was to scare a child. The knocked-aside boys scuttled away, terrified, back to the doors and crates and whatever other hiding places they could find. The few boys that were still focused on her, she drove away with some showy but ineffectual stabs with the switchknife, drawing them away from the pit and away from Cleric.
She found herself standing by Anurak. “The gearhouse,” she said to him. He nodded. They ran.
* * *
The dark-lashed boy’s name is Alec, a word that quickly becomes, to the boy who will be Cleric, a song and a poem and a caress, even if he only thinks it to himself as he scrubs a floor. The trip of the tongue from the l to the quick, clipped c. Alec carries a sprig of rosemary inside his tunic, where it crushes and warms against his heart, and soon the boy who will be Cleric takes to doing the same thing, and the smell of it—the smell of Alec—permeates all of him, saturates even his blood, even all the years later when Judah will use a vial of it to find him.
They are together whenever they can be. Theirs is an affair conducted entirely in the dark, and Judah feels the pain and the bliss of it, the glittering sweetness of every moment. The sightless joy of each press of hand and lip, each furtive fumbling. Both boys had been guilded by the time they were eight. What they do not know, they have to discover, and the discovery is a joy. When they can’t be together, the boy who will be Cleric thinks of Alec constantly. He makes mistakes in his copying and is beaten. He is caught touching himself in the small hours of the morning and is sent to bed with his hands bound. He doesn’t care. Alec. Alec. Alec of the rosemary smell, the graceful hands, the warm heart.
When we are journeymen, Alec says, let’s travel together. Away from here, with no eyes to see us—
Such bliss, at the very notion. It consumes the boy who will be Cleric, night and day. Finally he takes a small scrap of parchment from the burn heap in the library and, in the darkness, writes a verse. He has never done such a thing before.
The storm in your eyes breaks over me.
I am drowned in you. I am drowned.
Alec weeps when he reads it, and seizes the boy who would be Cleric, and they drown in each other.
* * *
Merrit and Anurak had almost reached the gearhouse when the boys—or at least some of the boys—recovered enough to attack again. The gearhouse door was locked. Anurak had a hand axe in his belt. “Hack through it,” Merrit said, and pressed her back to his. She could feel his muscles work as he went after the wooden door, close enough that she could hear the grunts of effort and hear the thuds as the blade hit the too-solid wood. The boys grew bolder, swinging their sticks and flails uncomfortably close to her—realizing, maybe, that she had no intention of actually stabbing them with her switchknife, which meant that she would probably have to.
“Hurry,” she said, panting, to Anurak, who gritted his teeth and said, between hacks, “These people—are obsessed—with keeping—people—in.”
Aren’t we all, she almost said, but then one of the boys lunged at her with particular viciousness. Before she knew it, she’d put her knife through his tiny hand. All that training with Kendzi. Years of it. Too strong to overcome.
The boy screamed. In the center of the courtyard, a few of the Elenesians on the outside of the knot looked up at the sound, noticing the tiny ridiculous battle by the gearhouse for the first time. One of them almost smiled. They broke away from the real battle, flails held ready.
Merrit decided the weapons weren’t mostly for show, after all.
* * *
You were in love, Judah says, as kindly as she can. It’s very sweet, but Cleric, you have to get up and help Merrit open the gate.
But the love is not the point. Because one morning Alec is not at morning rituals. Not in the garden. Not at the midday meal, or the library for copy work. The boy who will be Cleric asks casually, the only way he can. Is Alec ill? As if he doesn’t care. As if it doesn’t matter.
The unimportant other boy blinks. You didn’t hear? They took him to the guildmaster. Self-indulgence.
The boy who would be Cleric is astounded. He had only had his hands bound. To the guildmaster? For that?
The unimportant boy shrugs. He must really have been going at it.
Before dinner, they are called to the courtyard.
* * *
Anurak swore and whipped his body around, so he and Merrit are both facing the approaching Elenesians. “Metal-reinforced,” he gasped. “Can’t hack through it.”
“That’s a problem,” she said, her switchknife glistening with the boy’s blood.
“Fucked, aren’t we?” Anurak said.
In the guards’ eyes she sees excitement and frustration and bloodlust. “Seems so,” she said, and they readied themselves.
* * *
No, Judah says. Oh, no.
In the courtyard, the same pit where Merrit and Cleric would crouch so many years later, is filled with wood. Chains are fastened to the poles on either side of the pit and fastened to the chains, naked, is—
Alec. Brutalized Alec. The storm-cloud eyes are swollen shut, the dark lashes buried in damaged tissue. The perfect skin is marred in every possible way. He has been cut. Beaten. Burned, cruelly, in the most sensitive places of his body.
The guildmaster steps up to the waiting podium. Behold one of your brethren, he says to the assembled acolytes. Sunk deep beneath the weight of pleasure and transgression. As Eleni’s own sun rose, it found him in a private room, indulging his basest instincts. And yet I fear I have even worse transgressions to reveal.
The guildmaster reaches into the folds of his robe, pulled out a scrap of paper, and the boy who will be Cleric’s knees give way beneath him. The boys are jammed together like stones in a wall and that is all that keeps him upright. His stomach is roiling, acid.
Our brother has not transgressed alone. He was found with this in his pocket, the guildmaster says, holding the scrap of parchment aloft. His pitiless eyes scanned the crowd. Someone in this yard shares his transgression. Somebody owes us his pain.
The boy who will be Cleric does not particularly care about Eleni but he prays silently, now, more earnestly than he has ever prayed before. O holy Eleni, if you exist, prove that this isn’t your will. May lightning strike the stronghold. May the ground swallow the pit. Please, save Alec. Please save him. He is the only person I love.
The guildmaster continues. So deeply misled is this boy that he will not reveal the name of the acolyte who led him astray. He would not be coerced by suffering or by righteousness. This boy owes half of his burden to another. If that other steps forward, we will divide his punishment between you.
The courtyard is silent, except for the crackle of torches next to the unlit pyre. The boy who will be Cleric can’t move. His mouth is dry. His vision is gray. All he can see is Alec. The guildmaster signals to a guard. The guard steps forward, pulls Alec’s head up. And somebody must know, the boy who will be Cleric thinks. They were not that careful. Somebody will know. Somebody will call his name.
Please. Somebody. Call his name.
Who will step forward to receive his share of justice?
Nobody speaks. The boy who will be Cleric is paralyzed. His tongue will not move. His lungs will not draw. His mouth will not open. A trickle of urine runs down the inside of his leg.
Before it is over, the boy who will be Cleric will hope an ugly hope that he was not Alec’s only lover, that there was some other, worthier boy who would be brave enough to stand forward. He loves Alec enough to hope he is untrue, but no other lover emerges. So he stands, and watches, and does not move as they take Alec’s eyes, and his fingers, and everything, and when there is nothing left to take, he still does not move. He hates himself. He does not move.
Later, he will climb to the top of the stronghold ramparts, but he cannot jump. He ties a noose in the orchard, but can’t put his neck through it. He steals poison from the apothecary, but can’t bring himself to drink. As a last resort, he flees into the wilderness on a dark, cold night, unprepared in any way. If he can’t end his life, he’ll let Eleni end it for him. When he’s tired, he lies down in the mud to die.
But instead he wakes up. Finds a spring. Thawberries. A place to steal a knife, better boots. This, then, is his share of Alec’s punishment: to live, knowing he did nothing. He builds a fire. When the fire is hot, he heats the stolen knife in it until it glows red, then presses it against the guild mark on his hand. Over and over again, night after night, until the skin is as blackened and melted as Alec’s was, at the end. Until the mark is obliterated. It is his prayer, his penance.
Alec, he says, through clenched teeth. Alec, as his own flesh hisses.
Alec. Alec. Alec.
* * *
By the gatehouse, the first flail landed across Anurak’s face. He’d had a lovely face but Merrit had never realized it until the moment when it was suddenly marred by five deep bloody gashes, down to the bone. Merrit screamed and drove her switchknife through the soft place under the guard’s chin. She thought of Cleric in the pit, who was probably going to die anyway now, and regretted nothing.
* * *
Judah found herself in her own body, outside the stronghold gate. Lukash crouched next to her with his knife drawn, looking worried. “Are you all right?” he said. “Where is Cleric?”
She stared up at him. But instead of his dark skin and copper eyes, she saw another face that had once leaned over her with concern. A broad face, plain, with curly hair. Darid. Who had loved her, and who had been ordered by the Seneschal to die much like Cleric’s lost Alec. Months had passed before Judah had learned that Darid had escaped. A government had fallen, the House been plundered, her world changed utterly, all while she lived in a world where Darid had been tortured to death. When she had learned that at least that one awful thing hadn’t happened, she’d been relieved, and she’d been furious.
And now she was furious again. Because what Darid escaped in Highfall had happened to others—in the House, in the stronghold. Everywhere, throughout history. Others who were loved, who knew songs and jokes and stories. They’d had favorite foods and quirks that annoyed their friends and some of them had ideas nobody else had or would have, before or since. Lost forever. All of it.
She stood up. Lukash stepped back, his eyes wary, as she turned to the hulking beast of the stronghold. Which had been built to protect the powerful people within it, and the powerful people only. Nobody protected acolytes like Alec and the boy who would be Cleric, who was so damaged by what he had seen and done—or not done—that he could no longer even think the name he had been given at birth. That boy no longer existed. The Elenesians had murdered him as surely as they had murdered Alec.
And now, on the other side of that wall, they wanted to do it again.
She walked to the gate and lay a hand flat on its surface. The cacophony of the battle on the other side was muffled by the thick wood. She couldn’t even feel a vibration. It was as if the battle weren’t even happening, and why should it be otherwise? What was human conflict to a gate, or a wall, or a building? What was human conflict to a slab of wood?
She closed her eyes. Found the white. All the years this gate had stood here, all the humans who had passed through it. All these years that the gate had been a gate. The wood felt solid beneath her hand but the deeper she went into the wood, into the white, the more space she found. Before the gate had been a gate, it had been wood, and that wood had been alive. It had pulled what it needed to survive from the soil, formed those necessities into bonds and structures that held it together. She could feel each discrete particle and each fragile bond.
In the white, she traced those bonds, like she’d traced the bonds between the Workers in the Slonimi camp. Like in the camp, she drew—except now she drew power from earth itself, and the earth, ancient and old and alive, gave as much as she could draw. She touched the bonds that held the gate together.
And then she released them. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the wood at the bottom of the door began to wrinkle like paper. Then to fold. Then to collapse.
From far away, outside the white, she heard Lukash’s drawing-in of breath, as the great and ancient door fell into itself with a soft, dry whisper. A stack of unbound pages falling to the floor. The breath of air stirred by its falling touched Judah’s cheek, her upraised palm, her hair.
“Gods,” she heard Lukash say.
She stepped into the courtyard.
All within was chaos. She was in the white but she could see everything. The Elenesians were clustered in the center of the courtyard, wielding flails and clubs and any other weapons they could find. She could feel the Slonimi fighting for their lives in the center of the cluster. Next to the gate Merrit stood over a bloody-faced body wearing Slonimi clothes. She was fighting off two guards whose flails swung in the air and a countless horde of children. Children whose home was being attacked. Children like Lukash had been. But they were trying to kill Merrit and she was trying not to die and the world was a terrible mess. Merrit’s switchknife dripped with blood.
