The First Binding, page 27
He would have been upset to see their state now.
Crimson stained the bulk of his torso and waist before streaming into thin bands down the legs of his clothing. The candle and the flame allowed me to hold a dull impassivity for the moment, and in it, I noticed the torn edges of fabric around the center of Khalim’s chest.
Then I saw what Koli held in his other hand.
The sword looked like a needle that had been stretched and broadened, but it tapered to a single point without the hint of an edge on either side. It could have been shaped from mirrorglass, shimmering perfectly within the theater like it caught and held all light around us. Its movement drew me, even in the candle and flame, as Koli swayed it at his side.
Khalim’s body thudded against the stage, jarring me, though not enough to snap me out of my state of mind.
I then noticed the other seven figures standing behind Koli. Though clarity eluded me, no matter how hard I tried to take in the features of the men and women. My eyes only had room to hold Koli’s form and face.
He sank to his haunches, tilting his head. “So, what are we going to do with you, little rat? Do you want to fight? Kill me maybe? Like this one perhaps?” He gestured with the tip of his sword to another figure.
Vithum lay half-slumped over the far right edge of the stage. His sword rested on the ground, cut cleanly in half like it had been nothing more than paper. The angle at which his body lay kept me from seeing anything but the back of his head. An ichor of blood and saliva clung to his hair, matting and hanging in threads.
I swallowed.
Koli moved closer, reaching the end of the stage. “What happens now, little one, if I come down there? Will you let me send you off to join your friends? Will you fight me?”
“No, but I will!”
The voice shattered my hold over the candle and flame.
My heartbeat sounded again in my ears and the urge to retch returned. The muscles in my legs shook in a manner that had nothing to do with fatigue.
Mahrab strode through the wreckage, staff in hand. The firelight cast his shadow against the far wall, making it look a looming and twisted thing out of stories. It faced the eight figures, leaning toward them almost in challenge.
I saw their shadows stand out against the walls as well, all wrongly positioned under the red light and facing each other for a battle I knew I wanted no part of. And Mahrab’s stood the tallest by far.
Koli’s mouth spread again into that macabre smile. It made me think of a wolf gone mad. His eyes danced like candle flames. “Oh-ho. The binder from before. Come now to work some magic? Something to scare us off with? Brahm’s little tricks?”
The crowd behind Koli laughed as if in on some joke only known to them.
“I think I’m going to shove this staff so far up your ass that you’ll taste the tip of my wood against your tonsils, Ashura.” Mahrab leveled the staff toward Koli.
They traded words, but they fell flat against my ears.
Ashura. Storybook demons Khalim and I had discussed in passing. All the old plays performed to date had only referenced them. They spoke of them and brought to ear their songs. But Khalim had never deigned to perform one, even in practice, until tonight.
“Ari, run!” Mahrab hadn’t turned to face me, still glaring down Koli. His mouth moved and he uttered words under his breath I couldn’t make out. He thrust his staff toward the Ashura group. A gout of red flame shot from the tip. His mouth moved again and the lance stretched, sailing toward the Ashura.
Koli waved a hand in contempt like swatting away an irksome fly. His mouth moved as well, and the fire turned to waning sparks of orange, vanishing midair. The pillar of light had been snuffed out by nothing more than a gesture and half-muttered words.
They had just shaped and contended wills, folds of the mind, in seconds. Fire conjured and dissolved in the space it took me to breathe.
The display of binding prowess rocked me and would have sent my imagination wild under normal circumstances.
“Ari, run, boy. Brahm’s blood, run!”
My feet refused to obey, rooted in place as if by another binding.
“Your bindings need work, Mahrab.” Koli spoke his name half as a curse, half in a mocking tone.
“They’ll be enough to bring this building down on all of us if I have to. If you survive that, maybe I’ll use my last breaths to sing the Songs. Maybe I’ll scream your stories wide so people know what and who you really are. Maybe I’ll call for the Sirathrae and they’ll deal with you.”
Koli sneered. “Try it then. Call them.”
“I think I’ll try burying you all first.” Mahrab flashed him a more wolfish smile than anything Koli had bared earlier. His cloak billowed in a wind that was not there, and it shone bright as blood under the firelight. His shadow rippled with a movement it should not have had and I knew it a trick of my mind. “Tak.” Mahrab thrust the tip of his staff toward the roof of the building. “Ari, run now, damn you! Roh!” The theater shook.
Loose stones shook free, raining down around us. Larger sections of the roof fell and formed new craters in the already broken sections of the wooden stage. Every piece happened to miss the Ashura.
“Ari!” Mahrab’s voice hit me with the weight of thunder, shaking me deep to my core. His words held all the force of a tempest, promising to throw me by their power alone if I didn’t obey. “Run, now! I can’t protect you. Run!”
And it’s to my great shame to say that I did. I listened, almost compelled by what he’d said, and turned to run.
A larger portion of roof came down, exposing the night sky. Rain filtered in and a crack of lightning cast a hellish white-blue glow over the burning theater.
“We can’t die, binder. But you can.” I saw Koli lunge from his position on the stage, moving with the inhuman fluidity of water, and striking hard as lightning claps. His blade buried into Mahrab’s chest as the rest of the ceiling gave way.
The world behind me shook like it was torn apart. I wobbled, leaning on the hallway wall as I fought to make my way back to the understage. Entering my old safe place brought no moment of solace as the building vibrated harder. My home under the theater would be buried soon enough as well.
I ran to fetch the book Mahrab had gifted me. The tome containing the promise of my identity, stories he said would be valuable, and perhaps the mysteries around the bindings. And, something I didn’t wholly appreciate in that moment—memories.
I looked to the furnace, then the contraptions littering the place. The rainmakers. The repurposed piping and rope assemblies to simulate noises and effects for the theater above. Everything I was leaving behind.
It hadn’t sunk in truly yet, and I clung to that numbness to help me run. I undid a length of rope, using it to fasten the book to my back. My bed platform hadn’t collapsed on itself despite the shaking. I had no time to feel pride over that as I grabbed hold of the oversized nails and climbed.
Whatever aches the metal used to bring to my hands and feet had vanished. Whether it was my mind slipping into a colder version of the candle and the flame, all to distance me from the pain, or something else, I’m not sure. But I climbed my way up to the platform and then to the window.
It may be more romantic, I suppose, to say that I turned my head to give my home and old life one last look.
But I didn’t.
I crawled through the window and into the storm, giving thanks for the rain as it masked the tears upon my face.
A rumble sounded between the earth and sky that I knew couldn’t have been thunder. The ground quaked and I finally looked back to see the theater crumble onto itself. Stone fell below into where the understage had been and the last of my life went with it.
I had nothing.
I had asked to see magic and wonder. I had wanted a storybook life of adventure and demons—of Ashura and bindings.
Life saw fit to give me my wish.
And no amount of unwanting would unmake that wish. A lesson I would continue to learn.
But then? I turned and ran harder, no idea where to go.
Koli’s words hung in my mind. “We can’t die.”
I ran. And I ran. And I ran.
TWENTY-ONE
INTERMISSION—CONSOLATIONS
Eloine gripped my hand tighter and the flame at the end of my staff waned. “Oh, Ari. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t meet her eyes in that moment, or I couldn’t. My gaze remained on the fire and I fell back into the memory of what Mahrab had taught me. The impassivity of the candle and the flame buffered me from all that threatened to take me, heart and mind.
Eloine either had been paying better attention than I imagined, or just had a level of intuition that beggared belief. But she moved her hand to my face. “You don’t have to do that here. Stop. Don’t try to hide yourself from your own pain. You’re allowed to feel that loss, every now and again. After all, pain is pain.” She gave me a knowing look as she repeated my words.
And I gave her a smile built from more than a decade of practice. A hollow and broken thing without light on the inside. But on the surface? It carried all the charm of a prince from storybooks. Wise and full. It made use of as many white teeth as I could show. It was the kind that could set others smiling upon glancing at it.
All except Eloine apparently.
She moved a pointer finger down my cheek, trailing a path almost like a tear would follow to one edge of my mouth. “And I’ve made enough fake smiles to know when one’s shown to me.” She pinched the corner of my lip.
“Ow.” I glowered at her.
“Better. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to be sad and hurt. Let yourself.”
I held my stare. “It was a long time ago. I’m fine.” The fire on my staff flickered twice, almost like it disagreed with me.
“Mhm. I’ve heard that before too. It hardly means anything close to the words said, though. At least in my experience.” She gave me a smile much like mine. A vase of sorts in a manner—a thing of shining lacquer on the surface, hollow on the inside. “See?”
I wished I had something clever to say, but I didn’t.
Eloine moved her hand down along my throat and chest, stopping over my heart. “Oh, dear. It’s broken.”
I squinted at her. “Now you’re playing games with me.”
Her mouth twitched at one end, but no smile—false or otherwise—came. “Am I wrong?”
“I think you’re prying—pushing, though I don’t know why?” I almost reached to pull her hand away from my chest, but I didn’t.
“Have you ever considered that you are painfully stubborn, even by a man’s standard, and I’m trying to help you?”
“And how are you doing that?” The flame on my staff ebbed, flashing brighter before dimming to something barely alive.
“By telling you that it’s okay to hold on to pain and ignore it when you need to survive. But that you can feel it again all to let it go when you have to. Like now. Because I think there’s still a piece of that boy that remembers the night he lost everything, and that child has never stopped running.” She moved away, settling herself on the far side of the bed, and beckoning me. “Come here.”
When asked to come closer by a wonderful woman, the obvious choice is to do exactly that. But I lingered in deliberation. “Why?”
“Because, I don’t suspect you’ll be willing to let yourself do what you need any other way.”
I arched a brow. “And what’s that?”
She flashed me a smile that carried all the brightness and light of the flame from my staff. “Just come.”
I relented, extinguishing the folds of my mind and letting the fire go with it. The room slipped into darkness and I laid my staff by the bedside. I still made no move over toward Eloine.
“Listening halfway only gets you so far, Ari.” I imagined her still wearing that grin as she spoke.
“How far does it get me, I wonder?”
“Out of arm’s reach, sadly,” she said.
I inched closer, but stopped just beyond the touch of her hand. “And is that where you want me?”
“I want you to stop fighting what you really want to do. So, come here.”
Men, as a rule, are terribly stubborn. And I am no exception. But even I know when it’s best to stop. At least on occasion.
I moved closer to her; well, within her reach.
She took me in her arms and pulled me with more strength than I would have imagined her capable of. “Don’t talk. Don’t be clever and witty for just one moment … please.”
I had almost opened my mouth to be exactly that, too clever for my own good, like Khalim used to accuse me of being. But her plea had been enough for me to bite my tongue.
“Good.” She trailed her fingers along my neck and jawline, coming to stop above my left ear. She took a few locks of my hair in her hand, stroking gently. “When was the last time?”
“Last time what?”
“You let yourself grieve over your family?”
“It was a long time ago. That’s why I can tell the story as I do. All the painful truths as they are.”
Her fingers tightened, balling up some of my hair, and she yanked firmly.
“Ow.” I winced. “What was that for?”
“You danced around the question. If I remember correctly, and not too long ago, I asked you not to be clever. I didn’t think it was this badly ingrained in you.”
I knew better than to respond to that. Open my mouth and risk being clever, or prove that I was stubborn.
Eloine resumed running her fingers through my hair. “You’re allowed to remember their loss, Ari, more than just as part of a story.” She pulled me even closer, bringing the side of my face to her chest. “You can cry. No candles and flame tonight.”
I wondered if I had failed to wipe away the rain from earlier as some moisture welled along my eyelids. A few beads had trickled down my cheek to settle along my jaw.
If Eloine noticed, she made no mention of it as she rubbed her hands against my face. She held me there until the last of the rain had been cleared away, and all I remember were her gentle whispers urging me to sleep.
She’d given me good advice on occasion, and I saw no reason not to heed her now.
I slept.
TWENTY-TWO
THE BLACK TAP
She watches the storyteller sleep. Content that he’s no longer able to see her, she moves with all the subtle silence of the night, walking far from him and his staff’s fading firelight. There is little time before she is pulled back again, and so she slips from the Three Tales story den. She comes out under warmest climes and moonless skies, not so far from the teller’s just traded truths—and her own lies.
Eloine notices each of the cobbles under her feet as she slips between the waning candle-cast glows—all come from nearby windows. Each space of darkness she steps into is as familiar to her as every cloud the moon may come to hide behind.
Passersby take no notice of her as she continues to an alley she’d taken when fleeing the clergos.
She cannot risk a moment’s rest, as she is searching for something as old as the first breath and something which will likely take her last.
A song.
One that is a story in and of itself, and could have birthed all the ones that came after it. And she knows her search will likely lead to a song to sing about her journey after the end.
Eloine is late now, and many of Karchetta’s lights wink out to find sleep of their own. But there will be little to none for her this night. She moves through the alley with all the surety of a cat down well-walked paths. There is a secret between the old walls and hidden recesses of towns such as this. For all the places of well repute and those kept well under day’s own light, there are those hiding holes better left untouched and kept far out of sight. She travels to one such place now, knowing a piece of what she wants is there, but knowing too that she will be asked to offer something equal in return.
Maybe more.
For that is the shape of the world she’s come to know.
“No.” The word echoes down the alley from the way ahead. It is hushed, clipped, like a breath over broken glass and just as sharp. She knows there is an unspoken magic in this word—a boundary, one that many do not understand, and less so come to honor.
Eloine rushes now, one hand falling to her thigh and the slender length of metal held tightly to her skin. Some of the cobbles here have not had the time and feet to wear them low—they are uneven, and their points jab at her feet, but she has no place for the discomfort and the pain.
An oil lamp of patinated brass hangs from the face of a building along the way. Its weak glow falls over a man standing too close to a stone wall. The hem of a skirt protrudes from beyond his figure—a woman ahead of him.
He moves, arm snaking out to grab hold of her.
Eloine keeps her tongue between her teeth, though the urge to bury them into the man’s throat builds. She knows this is not a place or time for fire. This is a time for the coolness and cleverness of night. Her pace slows so she will not betray her coming. She walks heel to toe first now, the muscles in her calves aching from the awkward gait, but it muffles her twice as much as before. Her hand slips between the bands of her skirt and to the leather ties along her left thigh.
She is closer now. The young woman before her lets out a breath but says nothing to give Eloine away.
The man says something under his breath that she cannot hear, but it doesn’t matter. She knows the hidden meaning behind his tone. It is a thing of want, anger, and what many men think they deserve.
Eloine’s fingers curl tight around the piece at her leg and she puts pressure to draw.
Another half step and she’ll be in place.
The oil lamp shifts under an errant gust of wind that sets it creaking as if it is bothered by the scene below.
The woman ahead flicks her gaze to Eloine and the man’s back stiffens.
He turns.
Eloine pulls. The blade catches none of the lamp’s amber-gold glow, almost turning it away. But it holds all of the pale gleam along its edge of white glass and starlight. Its horn hilt rests perfectly in hand as if it were made for her. Its length is just long enough to reach someone’s heart should it be set to finding it. But she has another target in mind.
