Heir of Autumn Page 17

  They passed a feedlot, and the stench of the pigs hit her in waves. Her heart hammered painfully in her chest. Flashes of her father rushed past her, yelling, cursing her. She was running barefoot through the pigpen, slipping and sticking a hand into the filth. She was crying, trying to get up, to get away from the mess, from the pigs, from their horrible squealing and their horrible smell. Her father yelled at her, calling her a worthless little bitch…

  “Are you all right, my dear?” Victeris asked.

  “No, no I’m not,” she said, trying not to look at anything. She cringed as she narrowly missed a workman pushing a crude cart filled with severed goat legs. Victeris led her around it. “We’ll be through in a moment, my beauty.”

  She couldn’t regain her breath. Something had happened. Something horrible, but her mind was fuzzy. She couldn’t remember it, but she could hear a woman screaming in the distance. Using her training, Shara tried to bring her emotions under control. Was she a little girl from a pig farm or was she a Zelani?

  “I have to leave,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Come, my child,” he replied, and led her through the door of an inn.

  The smoky room was packed with slaughterhouse workers. They gave her and Victeris cursory glances and went back to their meals. The rushes on the floor were pink with the blood from their boots. A dozen girls worked the crowd, serving drinks or sitting on laps. One woman led a drunken man with bloody pants up the stairs.

  Shaking her head, Shara frowned. The smoke in the room and the stench of the pigs had left her befuddled. What was she doing?

  Shara swallowed and looked up into Victeris’s black eyes.

  “Follow me, my beauty,” he whispered in her ear. “I have something very important to teach you.”

  Shara let him lead her upstairs, down the hall, and through a door into a small dark room. There was a bed in the corner.

  “Why are we here?” she asked. The words felt bloated and awkward in her mouth.

  “Because,” Victeris purred, walking her slowly across the room, “I own you, body and soul. When I call, you will come to me. And when you come, you will obey.”

  Shara nodded.

  Victeris motioned at the bed. Shara sat down, and he knelt before her.

  “Let your hair down,” he said. “I like it best when you wear it down.”

  She reached up and undid the clasp in her hair. Her long, black tresses fell about her shoulders.

  “Breathe with me,” he said, leading her through the breaths. “Open yourself. Feel the room.”

  “There are too many memories in this room,” she murmured.

  “Memories?”

  “People leave their thoughts and feelings behind them wherever they go, like a footprint. I can feel them. It’s thick here. So many feelings.”

  Victeris frowned briefly, then his brow smoothed. “What are they like?”

  “They glow. The room shines with them.”

  Victeris glanced around the room before focusing back on her face. “Tell me more.”

  “This place is a brothel,” Shara intoned. “Hundreds of women have had sex with thousands of men in this bed.”

  His slender hands slid into the front of her gown. With deft fingers, he undid the top knot and loosened the laces. Reaching within, he cupped one of her breasts.

  “What does that feel like?” he asked. “What did those men and women leave behind?”

  Shara’s breath faltered. She swallowed and blinked, looked at the door. “I don’t like this place. I want to go.”

  “Don’t fear the intensity, my beauty. Go into it. Feel it. Make it your own.”

  She smoothed her brow and resumed her breathing.

  “What do you feel?” he asked.

  “Sadness. Confusion. An unbearable numbness.”

  He grabbed her waist and pulled her up. With a quick, delicate gesture, he brushed the cloth off her shoulders. Her gown fell to her feet.

  Victeris smiled, nodding. “That sounds like the women. What about the men?”

  “Desire. Drunken and distant. Frustration. They come here wanting something, yet they leave without it.”

  “Yes. Go deeper. What is below that?”

  “Loneliness. Terrible loneliness.”

  Victeris pressed her body against his. His breath was rough in her ear.

  “Deeper.”

  “There is nothing. Nothing beyond that. Just that desire. Wanting. Hope.”

  “A hope for what?” he encouraged her.

  “For something good. Something pure.” She frowned. Again, her breathing faltered. “For something…alive.”

  Victeris looked away from her. His teeth clenched, and he grunted as if he were going to throw up.

  “That’s what sex is for, creating life,” Shara murmured, her brow wrinkling. “The life of a child, yes, but also the spark of life in each of us. That’s what a Zelani is. That’s what I feel when I use it. Life.”

  “Life? You feel life?”

  Victeris hissed and shoved her back onto the bed. He stared at her, his hands balled into fists.

  “What’s wrong?” Shara asked.

  He took a deep breath, a sneer on his lips. “I want you, my child. You are very special. There is something you have that I want quite badly.”

  Shara wanted to help her master, wanted to make him feel better. She reached for him, but he pushed her away. “Soon, my beauty, but there is something we must do first.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  Leading her by the hand, Victeris took her to the open window. Naked, she followed him outside and across the tiled rooftop to a ladder leaning against the back of the building. Shara looked down and balked. Below, pigs waded through a half foot of mud, shit, and piss.

  “Come, my beauty.” Victeris tugged her hand.

  “No. I don’t like this place. I don’t want to go down there.”

  “Why?”

  “The smell. I hate the smell.”

  “How does the smell make you feel?”

  “Small. Helpless.”

  “But there is life down there. All life is beautiful, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you just said? Life is a beautiful thing.”

  “No. I’m…I’m…”

  “You are mine, body and soul.”

  “No, I’m…”

  “Climb down the ladder, my beauty.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Victeris placed one hand between her breasts over her heart. She shuddered, then turned around and put one foot on the first rung of the ladder. After another moment’s hesitation, she started down. When she reached the bottom, Shara stepped into the thick ooze. She whimpered and backed up against the side of the inn, trying to get her feet out of the muck, but there was nowhere else to step. The pigs milled about, bumping into her. She squeaked and cringed away from them.

  Victeris reached the bottom of the ladder and kicked the pigs out of the way. They grunted and reluctantly cleared a small space.

  The sounds of a fight drifted through the thin walls of the inn, but there were no windows on this side of the building. The sun had gone down, and the moon had just risen. There was no one to see Shara and Victeris but the pigs.

  “Kneel down, my beauty.”

  “No,” she whimpered, “Please no.”

  He brushed the side of her cheek.

  “Sweet child, I want you to kneel.”

  Shara knelt, her legs shaking. The pigs crowded in again. A fat sow bumped into her, and she stumbled, dropping one hand into the filth. She kept her clean hand out as if the mud was burning pitch. She began sobbing.

  Victeris moved behind her, placing his hands on either side of her hips. She shuddered as he touched her bare skin.

  “Put your other hand down, my sweet.”

  “Why?” she cried.

  “Because I wish it. Go to your elbows.”

  With a thin wail, she pushed her elbows into the muck. Ragged sobs rattled in and out of her s
haking body.

  Behind her, Victeris slowly unlaced his breeches and knelt in the mud.

  “You thought to rival my powers as a Zelani?” he whispered. “You who see memories and talk of the spark of life? You, barely more than a student, thought yourself a master? Zelani is about power, about taking what you want. If you have something that I lack, then I will take it from you. If you have life, child, then I will make it mine.”

  Shara gasped as he pushed himself inside her. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t resist. She was a little girl, fallen in the mud, pigs stepping on her, unable to get up.

  “This morning you were a Zelani who thought to graduate to master. And now, my sweet,” he said, as he slammed into her.

  “What are you now?”

  “What are you now?”

  “What are you now?”

  20

  BAELANDRA FUMBLED THROUGH the carved marble box and found what she was looking for. She held up the ornately crafted hair clip shaped like a golden butterfly. When she pushed the creature’s abdomen, a tiny knife popped out. The hidden blade had been a gift from Scythe after he returned from Physendria so many years ago. She had never worn it before.

  Baelandra tested the edge on her finger. It cut easily and drew a drop of blood.

  How had it ever come this far, she asked herself. But she knew. Year after year, she and Krellis had danced their dance. She had tried to soften his heart, remake him into an Ohndarien. Krellis responded with a smile, kissing her and telling her what she wanted to hear. How he must have laughed at her through the years, waiting for this moment to betray her love, to make his political move. She was a fool.

  Baelandra dipped the blade into a small jar filled with yellow paste. It was another gift from Scythe that she had never used. She had almost thrown it away several times.

  She tapped the tiny blade against the jar, knocking off the excess paste.

  If she took the dagger and scratched her own skin, would Ohndarien be better off?

  Her mouth set in a firm line, and Baelandra slipped the dagger back into the hair clip. She stood and walked to the mirror. Shaking out her lustrous auburn hair, she pinned it back with the clip. No, it was too late to turn the dagger on herself. She would use it on the one who most deserved it. There was still time to undo what had been done.

  Baelandra left her room and swept down her stairs to the garden. She paused in the shadow of a midnight plum tree and looked at the stretch of greenery between her house and Krellis’s.

  She couldn’t believe she had made love to him just two nights ago. She had kissed the tears off his face mere hours before he condemned Brophy to death. What kind of man could do such a thing?

  Baelandra slipped from underneath the tree and crossed to the garden wall that butted up against Krellis’s house. Her eyes searched the cool, blue-white marble until she found what she sought. The miniature gemstone, mirroring the one embedded in her chest, was chiseled masterfully in bas-relief on the marble. It was so small and perfect that one would never notice it unless one knew to walk thirteen paces from the corner and look to the left. The House of Spring had built doors like this all over the city. No one knew about all of them, but Baelandra knew about this one, and Krellis didn’t. It was one of the small secrets she had kept from her lover.

  She swallowed. So small, this secret, but perhaps it would make the difference for Brophy. She touched the gemstone carving with her finger. With her other hand, she reached down the neck of her dress and touched the stone on her chest. That telltale jolt shot through her, just as it did when she touched Krellis’s stone.

  A line appeared in the wall, accompanied by a slight scrape of stone. The door swung wide. Baelandra stepped through and found an identical carving on the opposite side. The door swung shut behind her, closing her in absolute darkness.

  Guiding herself from childhood memory, she navigated through a dark storage room into the kitchen. Krellis was still at the Citadel, and the Brother of Autumn did not post guards inside the house, another testament to his confidence.

  Quiet as a shadow, she climbed the stairs and paused before the door of his rooms, her gaze lingering on the six daggers carved above the lintel. She shook her head. This was her only course. She opened the door and stepped through, closed it softly behind herself.

  The room was empty, but she had expected it would be. She crept to the closet and pulled the door closed behind her, leaving the tiniest crack through which she could see his bed.

  A memory of Krellis lying asleep in that same bed flashed through her mind. His body was covered with cuts and bruises. It was the morning after he returned from Physendria with his young son and that Zelani master. He had been away for nearly a month, and they did not make love that night. It was the first night they shared a bed without sex.

  Baelandra forced the image from her mind. There were so many pleasant memories, so many times they had laughed and talked together. One by one, she stripped them away, replacing them with his face in the Hall of Windows during Brophy’s trial that afternoon. His cold expression hovered before her eyes.

  The trial had been a farce. They had locked Brophy in the Citadel, and even Baelandra could not get in to see him. The Sister of Autumn should be mistress of that fortress, but the doors were barred to her. She had allowed Krellis to take over training of the guard because he was better at the job. She trusted him. The Heartstone trusted him, but that trust had led her here.

  Brophy’s trial went on for hours. Many witnesses were called from the Long Market. They all said the same things, describing how the boys were drunk, fighting and stumbling about the market making fools of themselves. One merchant said he saw them climb the Spire. Brophy was looking up the girl’s skirt as she scrambled up the rope.

  The healer who watched Trent die had been the first witness who carried any real weight. She repeated Trent’s dying words, that Brophy had tried to seduce that poor girl and then pushed Trent off the Spire. It was all Baelandra could do to keep her composure as she watched the faces in the crowd. They believed the healer’s story. They believed Trent had told the truth. That boy would slit his own throat to gain his father’s approval. Couldn’t anyone spot a lie when they heard it?

  After the healer, they brought out the girl. Femera stood up and damned Brophy with every word she uttered. Her face was battered and bruised as though she’d been brawling on Stoneside for a week. Her voice quavered and whimpered on cue as she told the story of how Trent had been the soul of courtesy, of how Brophy became enraged when she kissed Trent. How the boys had wrestled. How Brophy shoved Trent over the edge of the Spire just before he forced himself on her. She broke down and cried three times during an hour of testimony. It was a good lie, so full of emotion and shocking detail that it sounded like a play put on by a master actress.

  The girl kept looking across the room with haunted eyes, seeking out the Zelani master, Victeris. The vile magician sat three rows back, half-shadowed by a column, nodding as if encouraging the girl to continue.

  The crowd went from skeptical to angry to enraged. It was Ohndarien tradition to allow all citizens who attended the trial to stand in judgment of a criminal. Krellis timed his witnesses perfectly. He spent the entire day filling the people with lies. The sun sank behind the Windmill Wall when Femera finished her heart-wrenching tale. The court adjourned for the day, before anyone had a chance to speak on Brophy’s behalf. It was no mistake that they would have a full night to circulate gossip about Brophy before he had a chance to defend himself.

  Baelandra wished she could talk to her nephew, longed to hear his story. When Femera first entered the Hall of Windows, Brophy looked at her with such sorrow that Baelandra’s throat tightened. Femera avoided his gaze as if it burned. But that was the last time Brophy looked at her. He spent the rest of the trial glaring at Krellis as though he would leap over the partition and attack the huge man with his bare hands. If there had not been four guards surrounding him, the sweet boy might have act
ually tried. Brophy’s face bore the bruises of a recent fight, and Baelandra wondered what they were doing to him in the Citadel.

  When the trial closed, Baelandra followed Brophy’s guards as they hauled him away. She trailed them to the Citadel, demanding to speak with him. Again she was denied by orders of Brother Krellis.

  By tomorrow morning, Brother Krellis wouldn’t be giving any more orders.

  The hours went by, and Baelandra waited patiently. If she was adept at anything by now, it was waiting. Finally, Krellis came to his rooms, giving a parting order to his assistant.

  He unbuckled his sword and looped the belt over the post of the headboard. She watched him undress and had a moment of doubt, wondering if she should wait until the second day of the trial.

  With Shara’s testimony, the opinion might swing the other way. The Zelani was a lifelong friend of both Brophy and Trent. She knew their characters as well as anyone, and she had been there the moment Trent had died. She had heard his lies and knew them for what they were. Shara was twice as charming as Femera. She might be able to pull it off.

  But Shara had disappeared. She had gone to speak with Femera and her father and never returned. Without Shara’s testimony as a shield against Femera’s lies, Brophy would surely be stoned to death outside the Physendrian Gate.

  It didn’t matter. Even if Brophy miraculously escaped, Krellis had shown his true colors. She had seen the man’s ruthlessness and called it effective. She had seen his brutality and called it strength. She had seen all of his qualities and hoped to craft him into a hero, but it was past time for her to do what she must. She should have killed the man before he ever got past Ohndarien’s walls.

  An hour later, Krellis’s breathing became even and slow. She crept from her hiding place and crossed to his bed. She reached behind her head and squeezed her hair clip. The tiny dagger came free without a sound, and she gripped it tightly between two fingers. Krellis’s chest rose and fell steadily, his arms limp at his sides. A gentle pulse beat beneath the skin of his throat.

  Baelandra steadied herself and leaned forward.

  “You are the last person I expected to come to my bedroom tonight,” Krellis rumbled.