A Consuming Fire, page 7
The stinging intensified, until it became a maddening burn. Through a haze of fear and outrage, memory seared across Anya’s mind.
Sylvie, sitting before the fire in the cottage she shared with Philomena, while Philly gently washed her. Philly had sponged water over Sylvie’s hunched form, the old woman’s skin so paper-thin her veins showed through. But an eerie and intricate pattern of dark ink still marked her flesh, marching in orderly and angular rows across every inch of Sylvie’s back. Sylvie would never speak of where it came from, but Anya and Ilva had known—they had no such practice in Weatherell, and so the markings could only have been made during Sylvie’s time beyond the wood.
The pain between Anya’s shoulders returned her to the present. But she could do nothing, bound as she was by ropes and her own deceit, besides lie still with furious tears tracking down her face. It all went on and on, for what seemed like hours—the chanting, the overwhelming scent of spirits and warm beeswax candles, the humiliating pain.
They might have asked, Anya thought wretchedly. Had they asked, she’d have submitted to the request. Not happily. Not in the spirit desired. But of her own accord, to preserve the pretense under which she traveled.
They had not asked, though. They’d given no opportunity for this to be undertaken as an act of will and so, while Anya might have felt distaste for the markings had she chosen them, she found herself filled with choking hatred for the thing being done to her.
I don’t want to be an offering, she thought with a new and sharp urgency. I never have, nor a prayer, either. I will be a knife in the dark or nothing, no matter the cost.
And then Roger appeared at Orielle’s side.
“Lord Nevis’s guards are at the door,” he said tersely. “They’re claiming Lord Selwyn has granted them the right to an inspection. I tried to put them off, but they won’t go.”
A flash of anger crossed Orielle’s face. “Nevis has no right to interfere in our affairs so far south! Turn them away.”
“It would be unwise, given the allies he’s been making across Albion, and the way he’s begun solidifying his power in Londin. At the rate he’s going, he’ll have added the city to his holdings by midwinter. Best to placate him until the god rests again,” Roger said. “We can deal with Nevis once the bale year’s passed. For now, you get everyone to their posts and manage the guard. I’ll see the Weatherell girl stays hidden.”
The pain in Anya’s back subsided a little, and Orielle snapped a few words to the gathered worshipers. Their chanting stopped, and there was a sudden shuffling of bare feet and swishing of robes as the room emptied out.
Anya fought desperately for calm as Roger knelt beside her and severed the ropes around her wrists with a short, double-bladed knife. But the moment the bonds were cut, she scrambled away to the other side of the bed, putting it between them. She wanted space, and to never feel unwanted hands on her again.
Roger sighed. “Don’t have time for your nerves, we got to be on our way. The guard won’t take long looking everything over.”
When Anya made no move to join him, Roger gave her a long-suffering look. “One way or another, you’re going to want to come with me. Don’t make me drag you, is what I’m saying. You won’t like it, I won’t like it, it won’t be good for nobody. But you’ll be glad of it, in the long run.”
“I won’t,” Anya said stubbornly, the first small rebellion she’d permitted herself since waking bound to the bed. She fixed her eyes on the floor and refused to look up.
Frustration laced Roger’s voice. “Fine. Then stay here. Let those grayrobes finish with you when they get back. But best be certain you don’t speak a word out of turn—they got ways of making people pay for wrongdoing, and I don’t think you being high and holy will keep you safe if you get their tempers up.”
“They can’t possibly do anything worse than what’s already been done,” Anya muttered, though the words rang false even as she spoke them.
“Hey,” Roger snapped. “Look at me.”
With reluctance, Anya dragged her gaze up to meet his. She and Ilva had gotten muddled together in her head—hadn’t it always been Ilva who behaved so stubbornly when taken to task for wrongdoing? Anya was the soft and gentle one, quick to apologize, quick to own her sins. It was her sister who met chastisement with a spark.
Anya’s eyes fixed on Roger’s, and it felt as if he were rummaging about in her soul.
“You think you been treated poorly,” he said. “And maybe you have, a bit. But it can always get worse.”
He spoke with such a weight of conviction that Anya’s heart sank. Nodding, she stepped out from behind the bed.
“All right,” she said humbly, pushing Ilva’s borrowed intransigence aside. “I’m sorry. Tell me what I need to do.”
Relief wrote itself across Roger’s weathered face, softening his sharp hazel eyes. Something twisted in Anya at that—a half-formed suspicion, an unfounded thought that all was not right. But nothing was right in this place, or at least not right as Anya understood the word. So she let herself be led out of the bedchamber and into the bewildering web of white corridors.
Roger kept silent as they hurried through the endless hallways. Once, he unceremoniously pushed her into a recessed doorway and stepped before her, shielding her from view. Anya frowned as she glimpsed a mixed group of liveried guards and gray-robed Elect passing them by, in the throes of a heated argument. One of the guards peered narrowly at Roger, who shifted in place and ducked his head. A minute later, as they carried on past a dozen tightly shut doors, Anya began to speak, only to have Roger round on her with a furious gesture for quiet. She resigned herself, finally, to this fraught wandering—it was certainly better than lying facedown, fighting back revulsion as the god’s prayers were inked into her skin.
At last, they tumbled down a narrow back stairway and emerged in an empty storage room, the walls stacked high with crates and the air smelling faintly of turnips. Anya’s pack sat in one corner, and Midge bounded joyously up from where she’d lain on top of it. With a muffled sob, Anya knelt and wrapped her arms around the dog.
“Well, wherever did you come from?” Anya asked as Midge squirmed about and attempted to lick her face.
“Get your things on,” Roger ordered, pointing to a wrinkled ball of damp clothes lying next to the pack and then turning his back to Anya. “They were drying when I found them, but I wasn’t about to wait till they’d finished. Don’t worry, I won’t steal a look. Hurry it up, though, they’re bound to come after us before long.”
“Who’s going to come after us?” Anya said, voice catching as she pulled her own familiar shirt over her head and wool cloth hit the place where looping, unreadable script had been etched into her skin. “Your people or the guard? I’m not sure who you’re trying to get me away from.”
“Took you long enough to puzzle that out,” Roger grumbled. “Ready yet?”
“Ready.” Anya tugged on her sturdy boots and scrambled to her feet. “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere but here,” Roger answered. Raised voices echoed from behind the door at the head of the stairs and he glanced anxiously over one shoulder. There was something strange and indistinct about his face in profile—a vision-blurring aftereffect of whatever she’d been sedated with, Anya thought. She followed close behind him as he swung open an exterior door leading to an abandoned alleyway, and Midge sprang joyously out before them.
But just as Anya was about to step over the threshold and into freedom, she risked a look back, too. And at the head of the storeroom stairs, peering down into the dim by the light of a lantern, was Roger the selectman, whom she’d spent an afternoon with on the road. He wore his Elect-granted confidence like a second skin, a haughtiness in his bearing that whomever Anya was about to follow—whoever had donned his image so perfectly—had never possessed.
Even now, as Anya’s eyes widened and she glanced back and forth from one Roger to the other, she could see a feral sort of wariness in every line of the figure who waited for her. He could not be a selectman, then. No selectman ever stood so, as if the whole world had set itself against him.
“Who on the god’s mountain are you?” Anya hissed, suspicion sparking fear, which sparked fury in turn.
The false Roger seized her by the hand and pulled her out into the alley, even as the selectman at the head of the stairs caught sight of the door shutting behind her.
“Come on,” whoever had hold of Anya’s hand growled. “Just trying to do you a good turn, aren’t I? Well, I won’t make that mistake again.”
As he pulled her down the alley and out onto a nighttime street, Anya could see his face changing. Flashing disorientingly from shape to shape.
The thief.
Tieran of Stull.
Well, that was all right. She took hold of his hand properly and picked up the pace, and then they were pelting down the dark streets, taking a dozen unexpected turns until Anya could not have found her way back to the way station if she’d tried. Still, it felt like too little distance—as if she could never run far enough to shake the lingering smell of beeswax and spirits and the sting of her back as sweat rose on her broken skin. But the thief let out a stifled groan and stumbled down a narrow, unlit side street, sliding to the ground in the deep shadows beside an enormous straw-stuffed crate.
“What is it?” Anya panted as the thief pulled his knees to his chest and buried his face in his arms, just as he’d done in the village where she’d found him. His hands trembled, shifting from shape to shape with breathtaking speed, but he said nothing—only stayed as he was, folded in on himself. And a new scent rose up to replace the remnants of Anya’s betrayal by the Elect—something dark and fierce, a breath of ashes and incense and sparks.
Tieran the thief’s gray hood had fallen back, showing a tangle of recognizable brown hair, and his hands had slowed a little in their frantic changing. But footsteps were ringing out along the cobblestones on the busier road only steps away, and fear bit at Anya.
“That could be them,” she whispered. “Hurry up, hurry up.”
“Trying to, aren’t I?” Tieran’s voice was barely audible. “Just need another moment.”
The footsteps fell silent just shy of the side street, and Anya’s stomach turned over.
“You haven’t got a moment,” she pressed, her skin beginning to crawl and prick with the remembered touch of the needle. “Change yourself while we go—I don’t care if it looks strange. It was a shock at first, but you don’t need to hide from me.”
“Not hiding from you. Hiding from myself, mostly. I just need—no, there. There it is.”
When he raised his head, Tieran was himself again—the boy she’d seen struggling like a demon at his trial for theft. The same bleary, pained look he’d worn after the thieves’ block had etched itself across his now-familiar face.
Tieran got to his feet unsteadily, but without a sound. He held a hand out to Anya and she took it unhesitatingly. Together, they slipped away into the dark, just as a pair of gray-robed figures bearing lanterns rounded the corner from the main road.
SEVEN First Victory
A loose stone turned under Anya’s foot as Tieran urged her across a stream. She stumbled and slipped, falling to her knees in the cold, brackish water, which immediately soaked her to the waist.
“Come on,” Tieran said sharply from the far bank, with Midge at his side. Anya couldn’t understand his continued urgency. There’d been no sign of anyone following them since Sarum. All around, there lay nothing but empty, shadowed countryside.
The thief had set a punishing pace through the night, cutting across fields and hedgerows and narrow lanes in patterns that made no sense to Anya. The eastern sky was beginning to grow faintly gray, and birds sang sleepily in the hedges, but Tieran showed no sign of slowing.
Her second day on the road, Anya thought wearily as she forced herself to her feet, water and duckweed streaming from her. Her second day as a Weatherell girl, and already she’d put herself at odds with the Elect. Already she’d made her own life more difficult and marked herself out as disobedient. It had been madness to go with the thief—to flee the Elect just because she disagreed with the manner of their praying. She ought to have stayed and borne their ritual, and left with a smile.
She ought to go back and beg forgiveness and make amends. The Elect were everywhere in Albion—she hadn’t a hope of avoiding them. But even the thought of returning to the way station soured her stomach. So she scrambled up the far riverbank and followed after Tieran as he led her on, through a wooded copse and out at the far side, where the distant ruins of a church were just visible, silhouetted against gray sky.
“There,” Tieran said, pointing to the church. “We stop there.”
Up close, there wasn’t much to the building. Just a hollowed-out stone shell, but Tieran threw open the rotted trapdoor to a crypt and beckoned to Anya. Midge hurried down the crypt stairs at once, bent on examining the fascinating, musty smells wafting up from the gloom.
“Down here,” Tieran said. “Get yourself in behind one of them stone coffins and keep out of sight till noon, at least.”
“What about you?” Anya protested. “Where are you going?”
The thief shrugged. “Dunno. Not staying here, though. Never wanted to get caught up with you—I don’t like Weatherell girls, or what they stand for, and seems to me you’re worse than most. So this is where we part ways. You done a good turn for me, now I done one for you. Neither of us owe each other nothing.”
“Getting me into trouble with the Elect my first day out of Weatherell is hardly a good turn,” Anya protested. “I can’t avoid them all the way to the mountain, and what’ll I say when they catch me up?”
Tieran stared at her flatly, his hazel eyes expressionless. “You’d rather I let them finish what they were doing? Just left you there?”
“I don’t know,” Anya said. “I should wish you’d let me be, and let them do as they wanted. It’s going to complicate things—that I don’t, and that you didn’t.”
“Well, enjoy your complications,” the thief said. “They’re none of my business no more. Now, would you get in that hole?”
Anya only looked at him, as she used to look at Ilva when her wild twin was being especially infuriating.
Tieran let out a gusty sigh. “Would you please get in that hole?”
With as much dignity as she could muster, Anya got into the hole, where Midge greeted her with an enthusiastic swipe of slimy tongue across the back of her hand. Anya felt about in the shadows until she found a crypt to crouch behind. Up above, the trapdoor closed, blocking what little there was of the faint predawn light.
Anya waited. She put her head down on her knees in an agony of guilt and indecision, torn apart by warring desires. She wanted to be rid of the Elect. She wanted to pacify them. She wanted to kill a god. She wanted to vanish into the wilds of Albion. She wanted to walk the long north road to whatever end awaited her. She wanted to never move again—to sit here forever in the dark, surrounded by the familiar smells of earth and old bones.
Across from Anya, an image of Ilva wavered to life, sitting in the sole shaft of wan light drifting from above. Her sister, who had been so free and bold in life, looked like a lost soul. Smeared with grave earth, face half eaten away by decay, Ilva sat quietly, mirroring Anya’s own posture. And though everything about this Ilva was grotesque—her mottled purple-and-gray skin, her jawbone showing through torn flesh, the gaping hollow where one of her sweet, bright eyes had been—Anya was overwhelmed by a surge of fierce and broken love. Of longing and grief and heartbreak so powerful they shook her to the core.
Down through the choking sea of her emotions, voices drifted.
“I hate these places,” one said. It was a woman, her words sharp and quick. “Old sanctums, old ways, all tangled up with that nonsense the Elect peddle. If you ask me, we ought to raze every ruin like this—get rid of them entirely, so people forget what came before as well as the yoke they’ve been toiling under.”
“Ruins do give me the creeping horrors,” another woman answered, her voice softer, sweeter. “If there was ever a place for ghosts, it’s one like this. I doubt they stopped here long, anyhow. Let me walk along the outer walls while you poke about inside. If you do see any sign of them, give a shout.”
“What’ll Lord Nevis do if they don’t turn up?” the sharp-tongued woman asked. Anya strained to listen, needing to hear the answer. As one of the women passed by the trapdoor, she caught a glimpse not of gray robes, but of a midnight-blue-and-black guard’s uniform and tall, well-kept boots.
“Oh, he’ll have us wait a few days at least,” the gentler-spoken of the two said. “The girl seems devout, though if we’re lucky, she’ll be less so than the last one. We’ll keep a watchful eye for when she turns up on the road again without getting close enough to cause a fright. The Elect are bound to be on edge after our intrusion at their way station, and we don’t want them spiriting the girl away entirely. They could get her from here to the mountain without anyone catching another glimpse of her if they wanted to, but they do love to uphold their traditions and make a spectacle of their sacrifices.”
“Well, if Nevis is happy enough to wait, I’d rather not have gone on this goose chase at all,” the sharp-tongued woman grumbled. “Let’s get it over with and turn for home—I want a hot bath and breakfast.”
Anya kept breathlessly still, drawing Midge close and leaning farther into the shadows behind the crypt. Taking the movement as an invitation, Midge climbed onto Anya’s lap, though she was big for such things. But Anya hugged her close and waited as muffled footsteps sounded overhead.
The trapdoor hinges whined as it was swung open. The air lightened. A wooden groan from the crypt steps echoed through the dank space as one of the guards descended halfway and swung a lantern about. But the pool of warm light never reached Anya, and Midge stayed quiet.
