City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1) (21 page)

“Kath!  Stop it!”

He reached around, found her ribs, and tickled her furiously.  After her giggles started to wane he relented and let her go.  Julei was a beautiful child, just past nine years old.  It was a delicate age, right at the cusp of innocence and the all-too-brief road to adulthood.  She had dark hair like their mother, and though Calestra had informed Kath they’d recently cut it shorter it still spilled down to the middle of her back.  Julei had a perfectly androgynous figure and a lovely face, with wide green eyes and faint freckles.

“Hel-lo,” she sang.  “Are you feeling better, Kath?”

“I suppose so.  I’m still
very
tired.”

“Hmmm…is that lady still asleep?”

Kath hated to hear her ask about that.  He had to get the woman away from there, if he could just figure out a safe place to take her.  “Yes.  She’ll be awake soon, though, and I’ll help her get home.”

He sat down on Julei’s tiny bed, hoping his weight wasn’t too much for it.  Julei casually walked over to her yarn.  She’d braided a string with her fingers, and while Kath sat there she stuffed it neatly into a small jewelry box before she sat down next to him.

“Wow,” he smiled.  “If only you kept the rest of your room that neat…”

“Kaaath…”

“You’re a slob,” he said with a smile.  Julei gave him a sidelong glance. 

“You’re a horse head,” she said with a laugh.

“That’s true,” he smiled back.  “But horses are a little bit smarter than me.  Sometimes.”

“I agree,” Calestra said from the doorway. 

Kath looked at Calestra, his younger sister by two years, and now as ever she and Julei’s resemblance to both each other and Illistra was uncanny.  Pale and raven-haired beauties, every one, with emerald eyes, faint freckles and thin frames.  Julei would grow and in seven years she’d be Calestra’s twin. 

Thank the Goddess I’m the only one who looks like Drogan
, he thought. 

“Hel-lo,” Julei said to her sister.

“We didn’t hear you come upstairs,” Kath smiled.  Calestra didn’t smile back.  She didn’t smile much anymore, but he supposed he didn’t, either.

“I need your help in the kitchen,” she said flatly.

“Me?” Julei asked.  Kath couldn’t tell if she was hopeful or terrified.

“No, horse head,” Calestra said, and she walked back down the hall.  Julei laughed, but Calestra hadn’t. 

Kath stood up, his gut twisted with worry.  He smiled, picked Julei up and dropped her back onto her bed so he could listen to her giggle-filled cry as she bounced.  When that was done he left Julei with her yarn and followed Calestra downstairs, readying for the fight he knew was coming.

He walked to the door at the end of the downstairs hall and into the kitchen.  The pleasant smells of fresh bread and stewed beef filled his nostrils and tugged at his stomach.  The long window in the kitchen faced the alley, so Calestra kept a pair of oil-lamps on hooks in the ceiling to make sure the room was well-lit.  Kath saw chopped onions, potatoes and celery on the counter, as well as two long loaves of bread, a block of yellow cheese and some yams.

“Chop the yams,” Calestra said, “and then throw all of the vegetables into the stew.”

Calestra was the spitting image of their mother.  She was tall and slender but buxom and full, with her dark hair tied back in a bun.  She wore a green dress with an apron the color of tea leaves.  Calestra also had a thin scar on her jaw from a childhood accident, but Kath didn’t think it marred her good looks one bit, even if she thought otherwise.  The Cardrezhej women had always been beautiful, and always would be.

Kath picked up a long kitchen knife and set himself to the task of chopping the yams.  The knife was ancient, the same blade his mother had used in the kitchen, and his grandmother before her.  It was barely sharp enough to cut a tomato anymore, but despite Kath’s and Drogan’s repeated offers to replace it Calestra would use nothing else. 

“This old knife…” he said.

“Don’t even start.”

How Calestra responded to the subject of the knife was always the best way to gauge her mood.  Based on how quickly she’d jumped on him just then, things looked grim.

“What is it?” he asked.  He heard her behind him at the stove, stirring and adding spices to the large stewpot.

“Nothing,” she said.

“All right.”  He took a breath.  “So, what is it?”

“You can’t keep doing this,” she said.  Neither of them stopped what they were doing.  “You come home like you’re going to stay, then you’re gone, and now all of a sudden you’re home again.  Make up your mind.  You’re confusing Julei.”  Kath heard her stir for much longer than she needed to.  “Are you still in the Watch, or not?”

“Calestra,” he groaned, “I told you – I don’t know.  First we’re being told the Watch has been dissolved, and that all of our duties are being taken over by the White Dragon Army.  But then soldiers start dying because of some…plague…and they put us back on active duty, except half of the guys from the Watch don’t bother showing up.  I don’t know what to do.”  He finished with the yams, so he tore off a hunk of cheese and took a bite.

“Yes, you do,” she said, “and yet you’re here, not with the Watch.” She turned and gave him a stern look.  Kath may have been the eldest, but Calestra had been the one in charge ever since their mother had died.  “You’re here with an Allaji Bloodspeaker.”

“I explained that,” he said, hearing the uncertainty in his own voice.

“Yes, you did,” Calestra said angrily.  “So because she has you bewitched, I’m supposed to think that everything is just…okay?”  Kath turned back around and stared at the counter.  “You deserted again,” Calestra said, “and you brought an evil woman into this house…”

“Calestra…” 

“You put Julei and father in danger, and I’m supposed to be happy to have you home?”

Kath was going to say something, but no words would come.  He wanted so badly to show Calestra she was wrong, but he couldn’t…and, worse, she
wasn’t
.  He’d made such a habit of fouling things up he couldn’t even see his mistakes for what they were anymore. 

Calestra turned around and stirred the stew some more.  The air was heavy with tension.  Kath heard a wagon roll by in the street outside, and small animals and children scurried past the window down the alley.  Bells tolled in the distance.

I’m sorry
, he wanted to say, and what he was sorry for most was the situation Calestra was in now.  Drogan and Julei needed her there – they needed her steady hand, the strength of authority and decisiveness she provided in the absence of her mother.  But that wasn’t good for Calestra, and Kath had done little to help.  A bungled stint in the City Watch had almost landed him in prison, and when he’d received a second chance he’d gone and gotten himself diseased, then ran away with a wanted woman and hid her in his home. 

That wasn’t your fault
, he told himself. 
You’re under some sort of spell. 
But it didn’t matter.  It was a terrible mess that could end up costing them everything. 
It really is better when I’m not around, isn’t it? 

“Calestra,” he said.  She didn’t answer – she was busy washing potatoes, or stirring, or doing anything but talk to him.  “I’m sorry.  I’ll leave soon.  And I’ll take the woman with me.”  He left her alone.

Thirty-Two

They ate dinner in near silence.  The dining room was small and cramped and there was barely enough room for Kath to move his elbows, so he ate with his hands over the table and his arms tucked to his sides.  A single lamp cast soft light on the Cardrezhej family’s faces.  Small bookshelves lined the walls, and the sky beyond the window was red and black. 

Julei made random statements about friends she only occasionally played with or things she wanted to do or see, like going to the doll maker’s shop when it was time for her allowance or taking a walk in the woods east of the city once the new soldiers made it safe again.  At one point she talked at length about a book she was reading called
The Forgotten Sta
r, which so far as Kath could tell was about a young magical mouse named Kristus and his journey to rescue his friend Patch (a cat) from the hands of an evil faerie.  Kath tried to remember if he’d read that book, but if he had it had been so long ago he couldn’t remember anything about it. 

He made quiet talk with Julei.  He was always impressed by her recollection of what she’d read and her insightful observations into what she thought would happen next or how she thought the characters felt.  Unfortunately their discussion seemed uncomfortably out of place.  Drogan and Calestra said nothing and kept their eyes on their meals.  Both of them seemed to want things quiet, so after a while Kath tried to end the conversation tactfully.  Julei figured it out – she was a remarkably bright girl – and the rest of the meal passed in silence.

Kath’s father was the one most at unease.  Drogan wasn’t as tall as Kath, nor as broad of shoulder.  He’d served in the Ebonmark City Watch and had even fought in a campaign against the Tuscars, but that had been over two decades ago, and since leaving the Watch he’d enjoyed a soft and relatively quiet life filled with big meals and brandy.  He was just over six feet tall, and his once brown hair had thinned and faded to grey.  Kath had inherited his father’s piercing eyes, and a thin beard covered Drogan’s stony jaw. 

Drogan had never approved of Kath’s decision to join the Watch, especially now that it was under the direct control of the White Dragon Army, which he considered a barbaric and mindless institution.  The fact that Kath insisted on serving in spite of his father’s misgivings was just the latest of many walls between them. 

Calestra was another story.  She and Kath had been close once, very close, but all that had changed when their mother had died.

“This is delicious,” Kath finally said.   He was tired of the silence.  “Thank you, Calestra.”

“You’re welcome.”  Her response was cold.

“Yes,” Drogan said, as if he’d just shaken himself awake.  They were all finished except for Julei, who usually took twice as long to eat as anyone else.  The others sat and fiddled with their bowls and absently used shreds of bread to mop up the last remnants of meat and broth.

“Do you need help cleaning up?” Kath asked Calestra, but she stood up faster than he could and waved for him to stay put.

“No, Julei can help.  Father, I’ll bring you some brandy.”

“But I…” Julei protested, but Calestra took up her plate and herded her out of the room.

Kath was alone with Drogan.  The silence was awkward, but it only lasted a moment before they both started talking at once.

“Go ahead,” Drogan laughed quietly.  Kath was happy he smiled – it took a bit of the tension out of the air.

“I …” Kath stammered.  They’d never talked much, even when things had been better between them.  Now it felt impossible.  He lived a life his father didn’t want him to, he’d nearly died, and now he had a strange and magical woman sleeping in his room. 

All this after what happened to Mother. 
The situation was so bizarre and confounding that words seemed almost pointless.

“Maybe I should begin,” Drogan said with an uneasy smile.  “Kath…at the risk of sounding ‘Fatherly’, I have to…well…what are you doing?”  It was such a simple question, but by Drogan’s tone it was the best he could come up with. 

“I don’t know,” he said.  He was shaking.  Kath had faced death and done battle with Tuscars, but he still trembled in the presence of his father.  “I’m feeling better now, so I need to go report back to Captain Tyburn…”

“Wait,” Drogan said.  “You’re feeling ‘better’?  You told me you’d almost died from whatever you’d been exposed to.”

“Yes,” Kath nodded.  His laced his fingers together nervously.  “That’s right.”

“What was it, again?”

“A sickness,” Kath said.  “I’m not exactly sure what kind.  The Company surgeon told me I wasn’t far from death.”

Drogan’s steely eyes watched Kath unflinching.  “And that woman…saved you?” he asked quietly.  His careful words told Kath how angry he was.

“We talked about this…”

“We’ll talk about it again,” Drogan insisted.  “She’s a Bloodspeaker, Kath.  Her being here is illegal.  Her even being
alive
is illegal.”

“She saved my life,” Kath said.  His heart hammered.  He was nearly nineteen years old, well trained by the city weapons masters, but here in front of his father he felt like a blithering child. 

“How do you know that?” Drogan asked quietly. 

“I just know.”

“No, you said it was ‘magic’,” Drogan corrected.  “Do you know about magic?”  He didn’t give Kath a chance to answer.  “They do things to your mind,” he said.  “Make you believe things that aren’t true, make you do things you normally wouldn’t.  Just like they did to your mother.”  Drogan’s eyes were glassy with tears.  Having that woman in the house had reopened wounds that had never fully healed.  “They kill the world, and all of us, every time they use their ‘magic’, and you’ve brought one of them into my house.  Do you have any idea what your Jlantrian friends would do if they discovered her here?”

“Father, I know, I just…”

“No,” Drogan said.  His voice was stern, but he was shaking.  “No, Kath.  You listen to me.  Please, for once,
listen
.  I’m grateful this woman saved your life…but she has to leave.”

Kath took a deep breath.  “She will.  As soon as she’s able.  I already told you that.”

“Yes you did,” Drogan said with an exhausted sigh.  He looked so much older just then.  “But you still haven’t answered my first question.  What are
you
going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Kath said.  His eyes hurt, his skin was grimy and he needed sleep, which he hadn’t had since he’d felt her touch.  “I don’t know.  All I know is I have to help her.  I can save her.”  He locked eyes with Drogan.  “I can save her.”  He didn’t know from what, but the strange bond they shared told him she
needed
him. 
Goddess, don’t do this
, he told himself. 
Not after what happened before. 
But he knew he didn’t have any choice.