City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1) (22 page)

“No,” Drogan said.  “You can’t.”  He looked away, trying to hide the tears in his eyes.  “And you won’t.  If you’re going to stay with the Watch, fine.  But you have to tell them you found her.  From what I’ve heard she was the cause of those fires in Colonel Blackhall’s camp the other night, so I’m sure they’re looking for her already…”

“No, I…”

“Just
do it
, Kath,” Drogan said sternly.  “Please.  Think of your sisters.” 

Drogan stood up.  He gave Kath a long, sad look before leaving the room without another word.  Calestra would bring him some brandy in his study, and later he’d go to sleep.  The conversation was over.

Kath sat alone.  He never should have joined the Watch – he knew that now, and it was a wonder his frayed nerves had lasted him through training and what little combat he’d seen.  It was his physique that kept him in, but he had neither the courage nor the resolve to match his imposing frame.

His father was right.  He already knew the woman had him under some sort of spell, and he was acting strange because of it.  He was being consumed by a need to protect her…but she didn’t need the likes of him. 

Besides, she was evil.  That was clear.  Kath loved the One Goddess as much as any Jlantrian, and her priests insisted that Bloodspeakers were creatures of darkness and deceit, that they killed a little bit of the world every time they used their powers…like the Blood Queen, the worst of their kind to ever have lived.  They bent people’s wills, corrupted their minds and took their lives.

Just like that bastard had done to his mother.

But then why is she here?  Why did she save me? 

He missed his mother so much.  They all did, Drogan most of all.  There’d been no way to save her, yet the thought of what happened still haunted Kath’s dreams even three years after she’d gone.

Kath felt like he was going crazy.  He never should have brought the woman there.  It wasn’t too late to report to Captain Tyburn. 

Damn it, it doesn’t have to be this complicated!
  He’d return to his duties…after he took the woman somewhere where she’d be safe.  Repay his debt, so to speak. 

He wasn’t sure if she would even wake up, and he couldn’t wait much longer.  He had to take her someplace and leave her there.  She’d be gone, and that would be the end of it.

And yet somehow he knew it wouldn’t be.  He knew that whatever bond she’d forged between them wouldn’t
let
it be over.

“Kath?”

It was Calestra.  Until she’d spoken he hadn’t even realized the room had gone dark.  The sun was gone, and most of the sounds on the streets had died down.  Calestra stood at the door to the dining room with a tall candle in her hand.  She looked worried.

“Sorry,” Kath said.  “I think I dozed off.”

Calestra watched him, but he just sat there.  His eyes were weary.

“Kath,” she said again, “I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It’s all right.”  He ran his hands through his thick mane of hair.  “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.  I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I don’t want to feel like this.”  He looked at her, and saw worry in her eyes.  “I don’t want to feel this sad.  But I can’t remember feeling any different.”

Calestra walked over to him.  He stood up and hugged her, and for a while they stood quietly together in the dark.

Thirty-Three

She swims in oily darkness.  Her hands and feet push against the fleshy walls of her prison.  Dismal fluid scalds her skin and burns her eyes.  She turns end over end, tries to right herself, but no matter how much she struggles she can’t break free.   

Where am I?

She knows she’s been here before.  There was no escape then, and there’s no escape now.  She is a prisoner in this black seed.

No.  I have to get out.

She tears and kicks and suddenly falls forward.  The orb bursts open and she tumbles into different darkness.  Her skin feels like ice.  She desperately scrapes the slime away from her eyes and vomits black mucus.

The Black Tower looms over her, difficult to make out against the ebon earth and sky.  The bladed apex of the citadel pushes against the belly of night as black lightning dances across the ground. 

Ijanna is naked, and her skin is blue from the cold.  It takes her eyes a moment to adjust to the eye-numbing darkness, and when they do she realizes she was trapped in an engorged ebon egg the size of a horse.  Thick drops of foul liquid pool at her feet, and trails of muck run towards the tower.  She peers through layers of shadow and sees more orbs, dozens of them, a network of organic oubliettes.

She shivers uncontrollably as she creeps towards another sphere.  Its skin is impossibly dark, a black bulb pulsing like a heartbeat.  Wintry mist curls around her feet.

A loud crack sounds through the air.  She smells the bitter odor of a new storm.  Black lightning forks between the eggs and blasts one open, revealing a human body held fast in the necrotic gel, naked and curled into a fetal position. 

She looks at the figure and screams, because it’s her.

Ijanna slowly came to.  She felt her own labored breaths and the soft down against her cheek, sensed the chill on her skin and the dull ache in her arms.  Pain suddenly pulsed across her upper back, so sharp and fast she nearly cried out.  Ijanna clenched her teeth and tensed, and after what felt like an eternity the hurt subsided.

Her eyes brought the sideways world into focus.  The small room had only a single window, through which she saw the yellow glaze of streetlamps and the distant glow of the orange moon.  It was quiet save for the creaks and groans of the wooden building, made more pronounced by the occasional gust of wind outside.  A lamp sat on the floor.  The room was sparse and simple, furnished with only the bed, a chamber pot, a small table with a washbasin, and an old wardrobe.  She saw her cloak, neatly folded and set on the floor next to her boots and clothes.  There was no trace of her weapon, or of the
thar’koon
.

Ijanna’s mind raced as she tried to piece together what had happened.  Slowly, painfully, she reached her arm around behind her back, and that was when she realized she wore someone else’s clothes, a woolen nightgown that was slightly too big for her.  She felt along her skin.  The track of damaged flesh was tender beneath her fingers, but the wound had healed, a testament to her unique powers.

Only two others possessed the same healing abilities as she.  And she still had to find one of them.

Ijanna dressed quickly, ignoring the pain in her back as best she could.  Her body felt slow and cumbrous.  Everything was spinning.  She saw the shadows of Ebonmark’s buildings against the crimson horizon.  

Where am I…and where are the
thar’koon?

A myriad of unpleasant scenarios raced through Ijanna’s mind as she approached the window.  The backs of short buildings stood on the other side of a trash-filled alley below.  The small window ledges wouldn’t be of much use in a descent, but that didn’t matter, because she couldn’t leave without the blades she’d almost died trying to obtain.

It didn’t make any sense.  She wasn’t in a Jlantrian stockade or a White Dragon Army tent, but in someone’s
house
.  Maybe Bordrec owned the place and he’d secured her there after the Jlantrians had almost captured her…that would have made sense, but for reason she doubted that was what had happened. 

Weak and wary and more frightened than she wanted to admit, Ijanna walked up to the door.  It wasn’t locked, so she carefully eased it open and looked out into a short and narrow hallway.  The air was dim, lit only by a soft glow from the depths of a nearby staircase…and a candle held by the little girl standing right outside.  She was very pretty, with straight dark hair and a doll-like face, and she wore a simple blue nightdress over her short and slender frame. 

The girl’s eyes widened with terror.  She made to scream, but Ijanna quickly put a hand over her mouth.

“Please,” she said.  “I won’t hurt you.”

Surprisingly, the girl immediately quieted, and her expressive blue eyes locked with Ijanna’s in a challenging stare.  Ijanna slowly removed her hand.  This girl was surprisingly brave, for she just stood there, pensive but intent, her expression both accusing and bewildered.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Ijanna,” she replied quietly.  “Um…and yours?”

“I don’t give my name to strangers,” the girl said matter-of-factly.  She looked ready to run.  Ijanna took a step back into the room to show she wasn’t hostile, and she’d no more than put her heel down when the child bolted down the hall.  By the time Ijanna chased her down and gently took hold of her arm she’d already screamed “The lady’s awake!” a half-dozen times.

Someone was running towards them.  Ijanna let the girl go and raced back to the room.  Her dulled senses didn’t warn her in time to avoid running into a behemoth of a man as he came around the corner.  He was dressed as a worker, but he was larger than any Jlantrian she’d ever seen.  The impact threw them both back, but while Ijanna quickly found her balance the man –
No, a boy
, she realized, eighteen or twenty years old at the most – teetered at the top of the nearby steps.  Head ringing, she threw out a hand to keep the giant from falling, and he desperately took it.  His touch was warm and vibrant, and her insides twisted with dark exhilaration. 

Ijanna let go the moment he was no longer in danger.  She fell back against the wall, shaken. 

It was
her
power flowing through the boy.  She’d touched him with her magic once already, and it hung across his soul like a shroud.

He stood at the top of the stairs, as shocked and as frightened as she was.  He had broad shoulders and a square jaw, thick brown hair and extremely large hands.  In a flash she remembered him, and she realized what had happened…and what she’d done. 

No…what the
Veil
has done.

Kath – that was his name, she knew it as surely as she knew her own – stood stunned, but he pulled himself together quickly.  He was big enough to snap her in half, but she knew he wouldn’t.  He
couldn’t
.  He held his hands up, palms out, and gestured to indicate he meant no harm.

“Easy, Ijanna,” he said, confused, because before that moment he surely hadn’t even known her name.  “I…I’m not…”

“Going to hurt me,” she finished.  “I know.”

Kath didn’t seem to know what to do, so he just stood there, hesitant and confused.  “All right,” he said uncertainly.  “That’s good.  I…uh…you’re feeling better, it seems.”

A man’s shout came from downstairs.  Ijanna heard more running and doors being flung wide. 

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Drogan.  My father.  I’ll deal with him.”  Kath watched her like he was afraid to look away.  “Are you sure you’re alright?” he asked.  He took a step toward her.

“Please!” Ijanna said sharply.  She pressed herself against the wall to avoid his hand.  “Don’t touch me, Kath.  It’s…it’s just better that you don’t.  Trust me.”  Her heart sank at the look in his eyes.  She remembered him, the dying boy in the Jlantrian camp, but she only vaguely recollected healing him, like it had happened in a dream.  What was going on now was the Veil’s doing.

Damn it.
He was entranced, and there wasn’t a thing either of them could do.  He was bound to her in a way she could never explain or understand.
  Or escape.

The sound of his father thundering up the stairs drew Kath’s attention away.  Ijanna seized the opportunity to race back into the room and slam the door shut.  Kath didn’t pursue her, and after a moment she heard his heavy footsteps fade down the stairs. 

Ijanna waited by the door, trembling.  She wanted to run, wanted to go out the window and scale down to the street, but she couldn’t.  Not now.  She rested her back against the wall, slid down and buried her face in her knees.  She tried her best to fight her nausea.  Worry ate through her like a worm.

She hadn’t been able to stop it from happening again.  Memories long buried rushed back at her.  She saw the fires in the night and the cage door, saw the bodies buried in the blood-soaked mud.  She saw him lying face down on the path, the blade in his back.

Tears ran down her face.  Ijanna fell in on herself, wracked with the painful knowledge of all she’d lost, and would never have again.

Thirty-Four

Drogan Cardrezhej was quiet and reserved, even when things were at their worst.  He’d taken news of his wife’s death with quiet dignity, and he’d dealt with his son’s various mishaps within the Ebonmark City Watch with an even temper and a calm demeanor.  But now his rage had taken over, and Kath had never seen him so furious.

“I’m getting the Watch!” Drogan yelled.  “I can’t believe I allowed you to bring that…
creature
into my house!  How dare she lay a hand on my daughter, and how dare you put your sister in jeopardy like that!”

Drogan shook with anger, as did Kath.  He tried to focus, to force himself to be calm, but his nerves were alight. 

“I’m sorry,” Kath blurted out.  “I didn’t think…”

“What?” Drogan said, exasperated, not quite as loud as before but no less angry.  “You didn’t think
what
, Kath?  That she was dangerous?  That maybe it
wasn’t
a good idea to bring her here?”  Drogan fixed Kath with a stare and waited for his son’s response.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said.  “I…I was just trying to help her.”

“No.  Kath, this isn’t right.”  Drogan paced nervously.  “I shouldn’t have let you bring her here.  I don’t know what she did to you, but it isn’t natural.  It’s
magic
, boy, and she’s one of…one of them.”