Chapter Fourteen

 

 

HALF THE city was after my head. I owned nothing but a few coins and the purloined clothes on my back. Four bloody corpses lay in the adjacent room—one of them a woman who’d tried to help me, another a man who’d been my hope of salvation. But what distressed me most at the moment was the very much alive and quite beautiful man standing in front of me.

“No,” I said for the twentieth time, arms crossed.

But Jory was equally obstinate. “Daveth, we can get the real story from him, and—”

“It’s necromancy.” I spit out the word as if it were a blasphemy—which it was, to my mind.

“We’re not going to bring him back to life. Not really. We’ll just ask him some questions.”

“And expect him to answer through his cold, dead mouth.”

“Yes.”

I shuddered and stalked the length of the Finch’s bedroom, where I stared at a painting of flowers, poorly rendered. This world is bad enough, and the last thing we should be doing is dragging the dead back into it. Let them go on to the afterlife if there is one, molder in peace if there isn’t. Gods and goddesses, I’d seen enough horrors among the living.

Jory came up behind me, his footsteps soft. “So you’ll just give up, then? We can still leave the city. Maybe.”

Or I could stand in the street and default to the throw-myself-at-the-guards plan. I could take down several before I died. But that meant more pointless deaths, and I’d had enough of those. As for fleeing, my desire to do so hadn’t increased since this fiasco began. In fact, I now felt oddly obligated to track down the reason for Lord Uren’s murder, seeing as he’d been my employer. Sort of.

“What makes you think this will work?” I said, still facing the ugly flowers.

“I’ve read about it.”

I turned to stare at him. “That’s what happens when you learn to read? You find stories about necromancers?”

“Not on purpose. I’ve read histories. Gods, I’ve read a lot of them. My tutors wanted me to memorize every instance in which a citizen of Tangye belched. And in at least three cases, the books mentioned valuable information being drawn from a dead person. Like when Queen Gerena succumbed to a fever, and—”

“I don’t care about Queen Gerena.” Whoever she had been. My grasp of the city’s past was tenuous at best. “Look. Even if I was willing to attempt this—which I’m not—I can’t very well drag Lord Uren’s body all over the city in search of a necromancer.”

“You know perfectly well where we can find that magic. And we don’t need the whole body—just the head.”

“The head?”

“Yes. That’s what they did with Queen Gerena, because they didn’t want anyone to know she was dead yet, and it’s hard to be secretive about transporting a royal body.”

Wonderful. Although, admittedly, a head was certainly more portable.

“How can they speak without lungs?”

“I don’t know. Magic.”

As good an answer as any. But great goddess Flyra, I didn’t want to do this.

With a final frustrated groan, I began to strip.

“What are you doing?” Jory asked.

“No point getting these clothes bloody too.”

Decapitating a man with a short knife is not a clean or easy task, even if his killer started the job for you by slashing his throat. I used the knife that had belonged to the male guard because I didn’t want to dull either mine or Jory’s by hacking through meat, tendon, and bone. And even though much of the blood had drained through the wound, it was still a messy, miserable job. Lord Uren didn’t look any better in pieces than he had whole.

While I washed up again and put on my clothes, Jory found among the Finch’s belongings a bag with a strap. He swaddled the head in several layers of cloth, seemingly unconcerned about handling the mangled remains of his relative, and shoved the entire thing into the bag.

“You’re carrying it,” I said as I laced up my boots.

If you walk along the southern bank of the river Tangye and pass beyond the Eastern Gate, you’ll find yourself in Moon Harbor, which stinks of fish. But if you pass through that same gate on the northern bank instead, you’ll go around the rocky edge of Seli Hill and be somewhere else entirely: Tewl Loor. The name alone made most residents of Tangye shiver and recite a quick invocation to the gods. But Tewl Loor was where those who practiced dark magic lived—and our destination.

I’d rather have faced the wraiths again.

We’d never make it all the way across town in daylight, yet we couldn’t remain at the Finch’s until dark. We needed another hiding place, and we needed it close by.

“You’re the one who lives near here,” I pointed out. “Don’t you know anywhere quiet?”

“Another haunted warehouse? I’m afraid not.” He frowned in concentration.

“No more safe whorehouses?”

“No. I worked for Branok and then….” He gestured at the bagged head, then brightened. “Wait. I know a place.”

“Where?”

“Two Gray Cats.”

I thought about the crowds I’d seen the other night. “That’s not quiet, and everyone there will recognize you.”

“At night, yes. But nobody’s there until fairly late in the evening. I know a place we can hide for now, and then we can leave when dark falls.”

I spent a few minutes thinking about this. Two Gray Cats wasn’t far from the Finch’s house, and it stood on a sparsely traveled street. Both good points. I couldn’t think of an alternate plan, and we’d spent too much time at the Finch’s already.

“All right.”

I gave the Finch a final glance before we descended to the ground floor. She looked peaceful. Dead, but peaceful. I hoped if there was an afterlife, she was happy there.

We put up our hoods before stepping into the street, but even with our faces shadowed, I feared we were too obvious. Jory remained slightly unsteady on his feet due to the head and leg injuries, and my wounds caused me to move gingerly. There was my height to contend with, not to mention the mysterious and strangely shaped burden carried over Jory’s shoulder.

Nothing to be done about it, although I wished again for that mimic spell. We were several streets away from the Finch’s and I was still mulling over whose face I might borrow, when shouts rose behind us. “Murderers! Thieves! Stop!”

“Run!” I yelled. Jory was as quick as I was, despite his head. Heads. And he knew his way through this neighborhood better than I did, so I let him lead.

We raced through wide streets and narrow, past shops and restaurants. We pushed our way through protesting crowds. My cuts hurt—even the one from yesterday that Jory had stitched up—but the shouts of the guards behind us kept me moving.

He kept to the hillier streets, but instead of going up in the general direction of Two Gray Cats, he took us down toward the Low. Smart. The guards would have a tougher time there.

On one unfortunately empty street, the guards nearly caught us. There were four of them, I could see now, and I heard them huffing behind me. One of them, an especially swift lad with a bald head, got close enough to reach for my arm, but he’d apparently forgotten I could do more than run. I paused just long enough to kick him in the balls with all my might, and when he collapsed to the pavement, I resumed running and caught up with Jory.

As we entered the Low, Jory let me take over. I ran us past a narrow street lined with towering, crooked houses. People gaped as we sped by, but nobody got in our way and nobody tried to help in our capture. Lowlers weren’t often sympathetic to the guards.

We ducked into a reeking alley where we had to avoid the refuse. I smiled when the guards behind us began to swear, less accustomed to this terrain. They were beginning to fall behind.

Jory was also starting to flag, his breaths coming in noisy wheezes and his usual grace gone. I used my uninjured hand to help him over a short gate, and we crouched for a moment in the shadows behind a hulking building.

“Go on,” Jory wheezed.

“Not without you.”

“Take the head. You can….” He panted a moment. “You can solve your puzzle. I’ll slow the guards down.”

“No.” I stood and yanked him to his feet. “Stay with me.”

We cut through an unused paved yard and wiggled through a broken fence onto another street, this one lined with food carts and peddlers’ stalls. We were walking now, and I’d almost decided we’d lost the guards when another shout sounded and I saw them some distance in front of us.

Fuck.

I had to pull at Jory’s arm to turn him around and get him running in the opposite direction. He was slow, though, and twice he stumbled. He would have fallen if I hadn’t caught him.

When the guards drew frighteningly close, I ducked behind a cart piled high with tin cups and cheap cutlery. The owner squawked as I upended the cart into the guards’ path. Half a street down, I did the same to a cart that sold skewers of meat—a more satisfactory effort because, judging from the screams, the fire burned at least one of our pursuers.

I glanced behind me and saw two men still chasing us. Jory looked as if he’d soon collapse, and I was winded and in pain. So with a quick prayer to Bolitho—who was surely tired of me by now—I ran to the nearest house, rushed through an all-purpose lockspell reversal, yanked the door open, and pushed Jory inside. Then I slid the bolt home.

“Daveth,” he panted as he leaned over his knees.

“Don’t waste your breath.” I quickly scanned the place. As in Jory’s house and many others in the Low, the entry hall had a door on the ground floor, no doubt leading to an apartment. Rickety steps took up most of the space where we stood.

“Up,” I ordered.

I made him go first so I could push from behind and keep him from falling back. We climbed three floors—a single door off each landing—and then we were at the top. Another desperate prayer as I yanked at the door.

Gods and goddesses, it opened. We were in a dusty attic, empty save for a few broken pieces of furniture and several small animal corpses. And, as I’d hoped, a window. I looked down from it and was pleased to see it was at the opposite end of the building from which we’d entered. There was no sign of guards in the narrow alley below.

The window sash was painted closed, and I almost broke the glass trying to free it. My entire body throbbed with pain, but I opened the window at last, then stood on the tiny balcony and looked up. Yes, this might work. Or Jory and I would end up splattered on the pavement like broken eggs. But even that was a better fate than what the city magistrates would do to us.

“Come here,” I ordered. “I’ll give you a boost.”

Jory gazed up doubtfully. “The roof?”

“I used to do this when I was a boy. It’s a good way to escape.”

He glanced at me sidelong. “Who were you trying to escape from?”

“It varied.”

I wasn’t as nimble as I’d been back then, and when I’d climbed as a child, I hadn’t first been sliced to bits. I took a deep breath and gave Jory a boost. My wounds burned like fire, but I gritted my teeth as Jory pulled himself up and scrambled onto the roof.

He disappeared from view for a moment. “They’re all attached!” he called back quietly.

“I know. Give me a hand?”

His pause likely meant he had removed the bag from his shoulder, and then he was on his belly, his face looking down at me and his arms hanging over the edge. I leapt up to grab his hands but missed, nearly tumbling over the edge of the balcony. I made it the second time, and as he pulled, I dug my boots into the wall and walked myself up. My right hand felt as if it might fall off. With considerable grunting and swearing, I made it over the top, and Jory and I lay gasping side by side, staring up at the smoky sky.

“How’s your head?” I asked after a minute.

“Marvelous.” He looked at me closely. “You’re bleeding.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. I have the needle and thread—”

“Not here. Come on.”

After he shouldered the bag, we walked slowly across the flat rooftop, mindful of missing tiles and rotted boards. We were fortunate that this row of houses was in relatively good repair and we didn’t fall through anyone’s ceiling. When we got to the end of the row, Jory looked doubtfully across the alley. “I can’t jump that far.”

“Nor can I. Hang on.” I searched until I found a long board that was a bit looser than its neighbors, and Jory helped me yank it free. It was long enough to reach the next building, but narrow. “Can you get across?”

“I have good balance,” he said.

“Usually, maybe. But with that knock to the head?”

He ended up crawling across, as did I. For once I was grateful to be skinny; if I’d carried more weight, the plank might not have held.

We proceeded over the rooftops for some distance, heading generally up the hill. When I was a boy, I’d pause to enjoy the views. Sometimes I pretended I was a king surveying his kingdom. But not today. I just wanted to get somewhere safe and then collapse. Meanwhile Jory was silent, dutifully following my orders as we went.

Eventually we came to a place where the gap was too wide to bridge, and in any case, I wouldn’t have trusted those roof boards with my weight. The building and its neighbors appeared abandoned.

“I hope there are no wraiths,” I muttered, although we were too far from the river for that.

I surveyed our surroundings carefully and decided a large balcony two floors down would hold us. Probably. I dropped down first, grunting with pain as I landed, and made room for Jory to land beside me.

Then we simply crawled through the window—the glass long gone—and made our careful way through the dark and down to the ground-floor exit. I spied a human body along the way, nothing but rags over bones and a few wisps of hair. It was slumped in a corner, abandoned. If Jory saw it too, he didn’t comment.

Nobody waited for us in the street, not even beggars or people in the throes of trance-dreams. It felt as if the whole city had forgotten this neighborhood.

“Why can’t we stay in there?” Jory asked, waving at the building we’d just left. He looked thoroughly exhausted, but at least his breathing had returned to normal.

“We need water. Food, if we can get it. And when night falls, the rats and shadow-imps will be attracted to us by the smell of blood.”

“Lovely.”

By skirting the edges of buildings and using dark passageways, we made it to Two Gray Cats without further adventure. Jory took me around the back, where a railed walkway separated the theater from a sheer drop to the river. He muttered a spell at an inconspicuous door, which opened without protest.

“You know your way in,” I observed.

“There have been times I slept here. When money was especially tight.”

We were in a long, thin kitchen that smelled of onions and ale. Moving confidently, Jory found two large pitchers, which he filled at a pump and handed to me. I held them awkwardly due to my sore hand. Then he found an earthenware bowl and, with a small noise of triumph, uncovered a store of foodstuffs. He filled the bowl with nuts, apples, and cheese.

“I don’t know if we can pay for this,” I pointed out. We had few coins left and would still need to pay a necromancer.

“The owners owe me a week’s wages.”

I doubted the truth of that but didn’t argue. Instead I followed him, ducking through a low doorway and descending stone steps into a cellar. He lit two spiritlights, giving us barely enough illumination to manage. In the dimness, I could make out a sleeping pallet and a lot of wooden crates.

“Strip,” he ordered.

While I obeyed, he pulled out what appeared to be the packet of herbs he’d bought the day before. He then removed my bandages, swearing softly at what he saw. “You’re a mess.”

“But I’m alive.”

He dampened a cloth and dabbed carefully at my wounds, then used needle and thread to sew them shut. I endured stoically until he moistened the herbs and smeared on the resulting paste. It stung horribly, especially on my wrist, causing me to hiss and swear. But he finally put on fresh bandages and pronounced the results satisfactory.

“Let me see yours,” I said, reaching for him.

He lowered his chausses. “It’s hardly anything.” A long red line ran down his thigh, marring his perfect skin. The wound looked puffy and sore, but it had scabbed over already and didn’t appear deep.

“It’s going to fester if you don’t use those herbs on it,” I warned. When he didn’t react, I reached for the bowl and scooped the mixture onto my fingers, then spread it on him. He remained very still, his flesh goose-pimpling at my touch. Despite my permeating aches and exhaustion, I wanted to touch more of him, to learn the secrets of his body if I couldn’t learn the secrets of his mind. I confined myself to swiping a thumb over the point of his hip, and then I gently pulled his chausses back into place.

“You don’t have to stop,” he said as he placed his palm against my nape.

“How’s your head?”

“A little sore. I’ve had worse after a night of bad wine.”

“Get some rest.”

Without even glancing at the pallet, he shook his head. “No.” He urged me closer and leaned his forehead against mine, an intimate act that made me almost giddy. “You’re hurt worse than I, and you— Well, you could use some sleep.”

“I’ve endured worse than this.”

“Daveth, just because you’ve suffered doesn’t mean you deserve it. And it doesn’t mean you have to keep suffering.”

“No,” I said, scoffing. “I can die instead.”

“We’re all going to die. Can’t we taste some joy first?”

I was going to tell him that joy was a myth, but he knelt before me and nuzzled at my groin. All right then, not joy but at least pleasure. I believed in pleasure. His hair was soft against the sensitive skin on my thighs, his breath warm at my groin. There was something slightly perverse about our positions: he on his knees, fully clothed, while I stood naked before him. But considering the way he looked up at me, I could almost believe I was something more than a skinny Lowler with fresh marks intersecting old scars.

He took me in and swallowed me whole, and it took all my remaining stamina to remain upright. I had a momentary vision—both of us freshly bathed, me newly shaved, Jory laid out nude on silk sheets with sunlight turning his skin to gold. If there was an afterlife, I’d wish for that. Even the gods and goddesses would be envious.

Jory took his time with me. My knees went wobbly and I clutched his shoulders for support. In the brief bliss of his hands and mouth, I could almost forget my pain and the certainty of our looming ruin. I could imagine myself respected and loved. I could imagine myself happy.

I climaxed with a long, drawn-out gasp.

Afterward I dressed and sat on the pallet with my back against the stone wall, a bowl of food at my side. I expected Jory to join me.

Instead he looked down at me with a faint smile. “Can I sing to you? It may be my last performance.”

“Yes.” I chewed some nuts and washed them down with water, wishing it was ale.

With a broader smile, he bent to unlace his boots. Within moments he was entirely bare, and in the spiritlight, he looked silver instead of gold, his fresh injury not detracting from his perfection. He was half-hard as well. Although I was too depleted to respond physically, I enjoyed the sight nearly as much as I’d relished his touch.

He sang quietly, with a slight rasp to his voice I hadn’t heard before. I couldn’t understand the words, which were in the Old Tongue, but I thought it was a love song. Something about yearning and denial, or maybe loss. Jory’s eyes glittered.

After he finished singing, while the notes still echoed gently around the room, he began to stroke himself. He kept his gaze locked on me.

I’d lived in close quarters with other men and women when I was in the guard, and I’d had my share of sex. But I’d never experienced anything like this. It was a trance-dream, a magical web spun before me, a visitation from the gods. I would hold this memory close, I vowed, and in the moments before Lady Death finally claimed me, I would recall it and die smiling.

Jory never once broke eye contact with me, not even when he climaxed.

He dressed and sat beside me, and we shared our small meal in silence. Then he reached into the folds of his clothing and pulled out a small wooden box that proved to contain calmsticks. He snapped one to life and took a drag, then held it toward me.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Never picked up the habit.”

He shrugged and had another puff. “I used them often before I was disowned. Too much of a luxury since.”

“Then where did you get those?”

No answer. We watched the small plume of smoke rise into the darkness of the ceiling beams. After he finished the calmstick, he flicked the butt away and lit another. He leaned in close against my shoulder. “Tell me something happy, Daveth.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something good that happened to you.”

“Your performance just now.”

He grinned quickly. “I’m glad you enjoyed. But what about in the past? There must have been something.”

Although I was reluctant to answer, I found myself speaking. “I wanted to be a guard. It was my salvation. My proof that I wasn’t garbage.” I huffed. “I was naive and hardly more than a child.”

“I doubt you were ever naive.”

“I was about the city guard. I thought they were what they claim to be—the power of righteousness. I don’t know where I got that impression. No Lowler believes anything good of the guards. But I did. And I cleaned myself up one afternoon and presented myself at their post outside the Royal Quarter. Demanded to see the officer in charge.”

“They listened to you?” Jory asked, surprised.

“I’m sure they thought it would be good entertainment. They fetched the captain. When I told her I wanted to join the guard, everyone laughed. But I said I’d fight any two of them there and prove I was worthy. More laughing. The captain agreed, though. She picked two of her best and we all went to the little exercise yard behind the building. We fought with dull practice swords.”

“And you beat them.”

“I did. Not easily, but I won. By that evening, I was accepted as a trainee. And gods and goddesses, the feeling I had when I lay down in my cot, with my uniform hanging nearby and the guard colors up on the wall.” I’d been content that night—no, happy—thrilled to be among my snoring, farting compatriots. Thrilled to belong. Such a fool.

“That’s a good one,” Jory said. “What happened later doesn’t spoil it?”

“No. I can handle bitter without forgetting the sweet.” I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. “And you? A good memory for you?”

He was silent for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to answer, which would hardly be fair since he’d started this little game. But then he sighed. “When I was fifteen, I slipped out of the palace and crossed the city by myself. I’d never done that before. I felt quite daring to pass through the Low without guards. I climbed Sevi Hill all the way to the top, where Flyra’s temple is. But I didn’t go inside. I stood outside and looked out toward the ocean, and I imagined I had wings that could spread and soar. I felt… full of promise.”

“That’s… nice.” It was, even if I couldn’t express it well.

“I sang. Bellowed at the top of my lungs, actually. And some priests found me—they could tell I was from Royal Quarter—and made me tell them my family name. My parents were not happy with me when their guards fetched me home.”

“Sweet, then bitter?”

He laughed softly. “Yes. My father beat me. But even as he was doing it, I realized that nothing would take away the memory of the feeling I’d had atop the hill.”

After several minutes of silence, he took out the calmsticks. I stopped him with my hand before he could light one. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“The smell… reminds me of someone.”

“A lover?” he asked, his gaze fixed on the shadowed crates across from us.

That wasn’t the right word. I’d never deceived myself about how Myghal felt about me, nor did I swoon over him. He was handsome and dashing; I was willing.

“Somebody I used to fuck,” I said.

“Hmm.” He tucked the box away. “You’ve never had a lover?”

I was willing to concede that love existed, but not for people like me. “No.”

“A friend?”

That made me snort. “In the end, we all end up like him.” I pointed at the bag containing Lord Uren’s head. “We all end up alone. Anything else is illusion.”

“But an illusion can be beautiful.”

He leaned his head on my shoulder, and we waited for night.