12th Illost, 998 NE
The locked muscles were beyond cramped. The pain was severe, but not unendurable.
If I was stuck on a rock-face, climbing, with no way forward, no way down – waiting for Phanar to come help me, or waiting for the sun to rise, shine on the next handhold –
When she pretended she was somewhere else, the agony was easier to hold at bay, but she didn’t have the luxury. There was an opportunity here to find a handhold early, find a master-key to unlock the whole problem before the dawn.
“Is he gone?”
She grunted the words as softly as she could manage. She’d been listening to the murderer’s breathing for fifteen minutes and it’d found an almost-unbroken rhythm; she was able to perceive through the gloom of the starlit room that his chest was rising and falling at regular intervals.
She saw the whitish triangle of the undead girl’s face dip in a solemn nod. The darkly-twinkling eyes closed in a slow blink.
The voice was quiet and hollow, a trace of some magical essence distorting the words, but it was still that of a young woman about her own age: “He dreams.”
She felt a sudden urge to fall, put her foot on the floor – for the thousandth time she righted herself, stopped the sway before it overtook her. “Are – are you…”
How do I do this?
The girl spoke into the silence Ana left lingering. “I can’t sakh… I can’t act against him, can’t even think against him, not in any way! Do you understand me?”
There was a desperation in the undead voice, a hungering that could no more be hidden than it could be suppressed.
A fury to match her own. And a warning – if Ana said the wrong thing, Osantya might have to report it back; anything she said might be revealed to him later.
Her thoughts whirled. It was obvious to her that she had to take advantage of this opportunity, but she had no idea which route to take. This was an undead creature – a wight if her guess was right – and for all she knew the thing was centuries old, a completely foreign entity…
But she studied the girl’s downcast gaze, took in her disconsolate demeanour.
She’s just a girl. She’s just like me.
The accent she used was strange to the rogue, but it didn’t sound particularly ancient or anything.
Why not start there?
“Where did you grow up?” she panted.
The amethyst eyes slowly raised, to meet Ana’s own.
“I’m Anathta,” she said haltingly, enduring a spasm of pain that wracked her lower back. “I grew up in a place called Miserdell. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds – apparently it was called Misery Dell once upon a time, but someone killed a dragon that lived there and built themselves a castle.”
“A miser,” Osantya said.
“Right! But I definitely wasn’t a miser – we were poor, I stole almost everything I had – and it wasn’t, you know, miserable, there – it was pretty awesome, really. The local locksmiths really sucked, you know?”
She thought she saw the shadow of a smile on the undead face at that.
“And it was a stuffy place, so there were all these people leaving their windows open at night, even in winter…”
“I grew up on the streets of Sticktown,” Osantya interrupted her (finally, Anathta exulted). “No one leaves things unlocked in Sticktown. If it ain’t nailed down, it’s gonna get stole sooner or later.”
“You’re… Mundian?”
The wight nodded, the white face dipping in the shadows.
“I mean – you’re… new to this?”
The same nod again.
Ana breathed a little easier, despite the cramp forming now in the thigh of her left leg. It was reassuring, knowing she and Osantya were on an almost even-footing in this situation.
“What was it like… living… in Mund?” She bit her lip for two reasons: the pain was worsening, and her use of the word ‘living’ might not have been the best choice, in retrospect…
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“I worked in the love-house off Cutterwell Way – it was – well, you know… I was alive… I had bread, and cheese sometimes…”
She listened as Osantya told her horrible story, but Ana used a portion of her shock-heightened consciousness to go over Redgate’s words at the same time. He’d certainly been very careful to phrase things the right way, leaving no loopholes that she could twist to her advantage: there was no angle she could exploit to set him up as a target for the wight’s attacks – and no angle where she could put her foot on the floor –
“Ossie,” she interrupted gently, using the shortened form of the name and getting a now-familiar smile in return. “Ossie, tell me something – what’s my foot made of?”
“Erm…“
It was strange hearing a wight’s hollow, sorcerous voice saying ‘erm’.
“Is it made of leather?” she pressed.
“Noooo…?” Osantya replied quizzically.
“So if I were to, say, put this boot on the floor,” she had to remember to keep quiet, she was getting excited, “this leather thing on my foot – would I be putting my foot on the floor? Or would my foot be still on my boot, like it always has been since he first summoned you?”
“I… suppose so?”
With excruciating slowness so that she didn’t collapse in a fit of pleasure and moan so loud that she’d wake the sleeping archmage, Ana lowered her right foot.
“I’ll just… stand here… like this…” she gasped, “and if he… if he wakes… I’ll lift it right back up…”
So it was that they spent the next five hours – standing on two feet was hardly glamorous but it was infinitely more fun than standing on one foot – and she got to know the undead girl pretty well. She got to understand Mund a lot better, too, but whenever the conversation veered too close to mages, champions, Redgate, Osantya suddenly became tight-lipped.
When the sorcerer finally awoke before the dawn and questioned his slave, Ana saw the way Osantya lowered her head to hide the slight smile on her lips as she replied:
“No, Master – her right foot never once touched the floor.”
Standing on one leg again and mimicking what she hoped to be the facial expressions of someone who’d been in the same position for far, far too long, Ana scrutinised the wight’s downcast face.
She saw the warping on the undead features, and felt the panic rise inside her breast –
She’s going to tell!
Her own eyes widened in realisation and horror, as Osantya tipped her chin back and blurted a string of words in a breathy, ominous-sounding tongue, pouring out a report into the air.
Ana looked back and forth between the two of them, feeling her cheeks flush with colour – and then, a cold sensation in her stomach, she lowered her foot again. She hadn’t even had it raised more than two minutes, and it probably showed.
Redgate turned his laughing eyes on her, smiling thinly. “I expected no less of you,” he declared.
For a moment she drew a breath of relief –
“Osantya, will you please now go and kill two people. Anyone. The first two you find. Then begone.”
This was not a question, and the dead girl murmured a simple, “Yes, Master,” before springing off the bed and loping at full-pelt to the door, her long stillness entirely belying the fluidity and ease of her motions, the awful strength inside her.
Ana was no longer locked in place by any power except the disgust, the fascinated disgust, as she waited, staring at Redgate, him staring implacably back at her –
The screams, the distant thuds, were over mercifully quickly. A sound like rainfall, familiar to her.
Blood spattering on walls.
Who was it? Who died?
The brief shrieks had seemed to come from farther away than the rooms occupied by those she knew best, but it didn’t matter. It could be one or two of the staff members, almost all known to her by name. It could be a pair of strangers – but what was the difference? Ana knew she wasn’t a nice person, but the idea, the thought that if she’d just kept her foot in the air, if she’d just held on…
Sure, it was Redgate’s fault. Sure, he was the evil one. Ana, Osantya – they were just tools, puppets in some sick game he played against himself. But she couldn’t avoid all the guilt. She was stained alongside him, painted in the same evil.
She knew in advance. Some part of her knew all along that he would figure it out, realise that she’d talked her way around the problem. But she wanted to do it anyway, wanted to spit it in his face that he couldn’t own her, couldn’t control her.
Mine, the blame.
The same way a person with the chance to pull a kitten out of a fire and didn’t was to blame. Sure, they didn’t set the fire. Sure, they didn’t make the kitten go there. But they had the chance. They might’ve got their hands burnt, but it would’ve been worth it. Would’ve been right.
Her breathing had increased in tempo. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t see. Exhaustion and grief gave way to the inexorable advance of nausea, despair…
She curled up into a ball on the floor, heard his chuckle and didn’t care. Didn’t care that he knew he had broken her will. Didn’t care anymore.
There would be no trace, no explanation. But Phanar would suspect. He would have to, now. First the sailor, Pelteron – now two people in the Sandtrap tavern – surely he would suspect…
But did she want him to? If he suspected, if he acted against Redgate – that would mean her brother’s death.
Trouble like this seemed to follow them, though. This would be the third time someone had been killed at a tavern while they stayed there. Although none of the others would look quite like this. From the suddenness with which the screams had been cut off, she could only imagine the brutality with which the victims had been dispatched…
What if it was him Osantya had attacked? He could’ve been downstairs by this time… Would he have survived, a surprise assault from a wight in the pre-dawn darkness? What about Ibbalat? Kani’s faith might have actually made her the best target, in the long run – she probably had the best chance of putting down a wight at short notice…
But no. Her ears were too good to be misled; there was no way it was one of the people she loved who had died. Though, that presented its own problems. He would expect something like this to have woken her up.
She went and washed her face, knowing what was coming. Not five minutes later, Phanar arrived to find her sitting demurely on the bed next to the sheet-draped sorcerer, her vambraces and belts already fitted, prepared to ‘investigate the murders’ before they went down to the place Derezo would have the camels waiting.
She would play the part that would let her protect her brother. She was weak – she couldn’t help but pray for him to figure out what was happening to her, what Redgate was in truth – but she would pray at the same time for him to never figure it out, pray for his safety.
There was no ‘figuring out’ what Redgate was in truth. There was no word in any language fit to describe him.
Except one.
Doomed.
* * *