Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (41 page)

The smell of burning awoke him. An acrid smell that burnt his nostrils, made his throat sting. His eyes fluttered and found his world at a precarious tilt. Everything was on a slant. He had somehow found his way into his bed in his sleep, and propped himself up on its straw pillows.

Roasted fish. That was the smell. Greasy, salty, roasted fish. As he sniffed the air, Farden became aware of the deep emptiness his stomach had been harbouring. It felt as though he had gulped down a sharp lump of rock in his sleep.

Farden could hear voices too, and a low whistling. He tried to shut his eyes but his hunger pried them open. It was no use. He tried his legs. They were there at least, but they were tired, aching, and barely working. His arms were the same. His whole body felt borrowed and foreign. It took him a full minute to fling himself into an upright position.

Step by shuffling step he made it to the door. The others were sitting in a circle under the blanket of stars. Jeasin was lying on a filthy blanket in the sand, probably asleep. Ilios lay like a cat, with his forelegs curled underneath him and his tail wrapping around him like not enough twine around a present. Loki was prodding the orange fire with a stick, his back to the mage. It was dying with the night; dawn was beginning to claw its way to the top of the horizon.
How long had he slept?

Farden stumbled his way down to the fire. His stomach announced his arrival with a gurgling rumble. Loki and Ilios looked up.

‘Have you even moved since I left?’ he muttered hoarsely to Loki. The god shrugged. Farden took the stick from him and poked around in the fire, where a pot of fish stew had been left to keep warm in the coals. He knelt to pick out some nondescript vegetables and a morsel of oily fish with his fingers. They were lukewarm, but he gobbled them down hungrily while he eyed the god. Loki looked as fresh-faced as ever. Only a slight dusting of sand clung to his youthful skin. His eyes glistened in the fading light of the stars and the fire. ‘Do you even sleep?’ he asked.

‘Of course not. Gods don’t need sleep’ he said, in a quiet voice. He seemed wary of waking the woman. She snored gently, twitching in whatever dreams she was having. Ilios was staring at her intently.

‘Mhm,’ Farden mumbled around a mouthful of fish, watching the gryphon. ‘You’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing, Ilios. She doesn’t need your dark dreams.’

The gryphon looked up and fixed Farden with his golden eyes. Farden couldn’t hold them for long. Something in those eyes was sorrowful, and he couldn’t meet it. He occupied himself with his stew instead.

‘Sleep well?’ Loki asked.

Farden nodded, manhandling a half-warm potato. ‘A dreamless sleep. As they should be.’

‘You deserve a nightmare or two, if’n you ask me,’ whispered a quiet, cold voice. It was Jeasin. She rolled over. Flecks of sand in her hair caught the orange glow of the embers. ‘After what you jus’ put me through.’

‘Quit your whining, whore. You had a choice.’

‘Choice? Don’t remember having a choice, you swindlin’ bastard. You forced me into it. ‘aven’t you pulled enough lives into your shit-trough already?’ she hissed, deep in her throat.

Farden spat a bone out. ‘You made your bed when you sold me to the Duke.’

‘I thought you were used to me fucking you.’

‘Normally I pay.’

Loki looked up at Ilios. ‘What a lovely gathering we have here…’ he whispered.

Farden flung a tough bit of gristle in his direction. ‘And you’re no better, Loki.’

Jeasin turned her sharp tongue on the god. She had ignored him so far, too angry to do anything but sleep. ‘So that’s your name is it? Sounds familiar. Where ‘ave I ‘eard that before?’

Loki sat a little straighter. ‘On the lips of countless worshippers prostrate before shrines, perhaps? Or written in the long list of deities passed down from generation to generation? Or, if Farden’s whore comment is anything to go by, perhaps you’ve heard it in the whispered ecstasies of your many clients?’

Jeasin pulled a confused face. She jerked a thumb at Farden. ‘Is ‘e a halfwit? Because it sounds like ‘e is.’

Farden shook his head. ‘Go back to sleep, Jeasin,’ he growled, turning his back on her. ‘If you want to shout at me, do it in the morning.’ For half a moment she looked as though she would pounce on him, but instead she blew an exasperated sigh, rolled over, and muttered something dark under her breath. It wasn’t long before she was snoring softly again. Exhaustion quenched anger for the moment.

‘While we’re on the subject, why did you bring her?’ whispered Loki.

Farden rolled his eyes. ‘I would have thought an omniscient being like yourself would have known?’

‘I’m not Heimdall, Farden,’ reminded Loki.

‘She sold me to the Duke for a bag of jewels. Let one of his men spy on me from the next room. Set me up to die, so she could reap the profits.’ The mage’s tone was beyond bitter.

‘Why?’

‘To protect her girls, the other whores she had taken under her wing. She’s a molly. She’s in charge of her house. The Duke offered her his protection and she took it.’

‘And you blame her for that?’

Farden thought for a moment, staring up at the hazy stars. Did he blame her? Could he, knowing how she had cared for her girls, worried for them, fought for them? Farden had already spelt it out for himself. The question was, would he have sold her to keep his armour safe? He already knew the answer, and it was a cold, resounding
yes
, clear as a bell on a winter morning. Farden felt the teeth of guilt bite at him. ‘Yes,’ he lied, more to confuse Loki than to mask his own regret. ‘Yes I do.’ Ilios saw the hard look in Farden’s eyes and whistled plaintively.

The god raised an eyebrow. ‘What a strange world you humans have carved for yourselves.’

Farden narrowed his eyes. ‘I would blame the gods, but I know better now.’

‘You think we don’t care?’

Farden chuckled loudly. ‘Hah! If this world was on fire, I don’t think you’d spare the piss to put it out.’

Strangely, Loki chuckled too. ‘And who would pray to us then?’

Farden scowled. ‘And that’s the golden question, isn’t it?’

Silence passed between the two of them. Farden concentrated on filling his empty stomach. Ilios let his gaze rove from one to the other, trying to read their eyes. Loki echoed his earlier question. ‘So, why did you bring her here?’

‘It wasn’t part of my plan.’

‘Which was?’

‘Just teach her a lesson… somehow. This wasn’t part of it.’ Farden felt another nibble of guilt. Barely a month ago he had been watching her sleep, even daring to stroke her hair, like he had with Cheska. Had he needed to punish her? Yes. No… Farden bit his lip. ‘She brought this on herself,’ he told himself again.

‘What will you do with her?’ Loki echoed the question.

‘Traffyd and Seria, maybe,’ mumbled Farden. ‘They need a hand around the farm. She may be blind, but she’s resilient. Maybe that’ll work.’

‘Good with her hands, is she?’

Farden shot him a dark look.

‘And what will you do?’

Farden looked up at the stars, frozen in their slow dance. ‘Go north, probably. I know Leath duchy like the back of my hand. Ness and Rannoch too. I can disappear there.’

‘I’m not workin’ on a bloody farm, while you
disappear
wherever you please,’ hissed Jeasin. She’d awoken again, feigning sleep.

‘You are free to go wherever you want.’

The mage’s words were like sparks to tinder. Jeasin sprang upright and slapped the sand. ‘You promised to take me with you!’

Farden stared at the sharp edges of a broken promise, feeling yet another stab of guilt.
Damn those feelings of his
. ‘No, I promised to get you out of Tayn,’ he coldly reminded her. Even though she couldn’t see the gesture, he waved his arm towards the black sea and the stars. ‘This doesn’t look like Tayn to me.’

‘You’ve ruined my life!’

Another in a long line.
‘And you ended mine!’ snapped Farden, resisting the urge to put a hand to his neck. ‘My friends will take you, if you can stomach some real work for a change. If not, I know a lovely place to stay with a great view.’ Farden pointed in the direction of his dilapidated shack, and then got to his feet. He’d had his fill of stew and sour conversation.

‘How can you be such a heartless bastard?’

Farden snorted as he left. ‘I’ve spent a long time practising,’ he said, drily.

‘That he has,’ added Loki. He too got to his feet and followed the mage, leaving a furious Jeasin to strangle the sand and kick her feet in rage.

Inside the dark shack, Farden rummaged around for fresh flint and tinder. It was a fruitless search. Loki stood in the doorway.
What did he want now?
Farden sighed. He hated to ask the god for help, but he was tired. ‘Have you got any fire in those endless pockets of yours?’

Loki nodded and produced a fresh flint, a steel, and a box of wood shavings. Farden proceeded to break up a crate and stuffed the splintered bones of it into the dirty stove. It took him a moment, but he soon had the crackling beginnings of a fire. As the light began to grow and flick back the dawn-lit and dusty gloom, Farden found a seat and his discarded haversack. Something heavy and metal clinked inside it. It was the flail.

‘You’ll have to wait your turn,’ he told it, and put it on the floor. Following in the weapon’s wake came a large, empty notebook, a spare. He propped it upright on his lap, open at a vacant page. He sucked his teeth as he cast around for a quill or fine stub of charcoal. He looked up at the god again, reluctantly.

No sooner had he met Loki’s eyes did the strange god hand him a quill.

‘Ink?’ asked the mage.

Loki shook his head. ‘Oilamander quill. Feathered lizard. Makes its own ink. That quill will be good for a few hours or so.’

Farden contemplated thanking him, and then thought better of it. He found a large chunk of his shattered mirror and leant it against the notebook. Then, he picked up another, smaller shard and placed that on his knee. After rubbing the dust from it with his thumb, he grabbed the hem of his shirt, hesitated, and then pointed to the door. ‘You might want to leave,’ he warned.

But Loki had already guessed what was coming. He shut the door but remained in the shack. He even had the nerve to sit down on the floor, ready to watch. Farden raised an eyebrow. ‘As if I need to fear a Written’s book,’ Loki beat him to it. He could barely contain his superior tone.

Farden shrugged. ‘You’ve been warned,’ he said.

Wincing as his aching muscles set fire to themselves, Farden pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. He clicked his neck from side to side, rubbed his eyes, and leant closer to the growing light of the stove. It would do.

With the quill in one hand, Farden lifted the shard over his shoulder and angled it so he could see his Book emblazoned on his bruised and bony back. He could see the ridges of his spine leading a malnourished path down to his hips. See the scars weaving in and out of the black script. He sighed, and with a steady hand, he began to transcribe.

Loki was transfixed. He couldn’t see it all, but what he could see was like nothing he had ever seen in his entire existence. To Farden, the script was meaningless; a foreign tongue that had been lost to time and forgotten tomes, but to Loki, it was a song. A song that wove back and forth between the scars and old wounds of the mage’s skin. A song that he had heard Evernia sing snatches of when she thought she was alone. A song that had been butchered and twisted into this Written’s tattoo. Loki let its words parade through a cavernous hall of his mind’s construction and sing out as they passed him by. Even though the words stayed dark and dead in that little shack, in his mind they flashed and pulsed with a light brighter than the sun. The god was hypnotised.

It was only when Farden’s tired arm began to sag, a good few hours of unblinking bewitchment later, that the god moved. ‘Let me,’ breathed Loki. Dawn had risen, and the daylight had begun to creep through the splintered windows of Farden’s shack.

The mage flinched at the words, as if he had forgotten he had company. The Book was only half done. He rubbed his eyes, and put his work aside as he stood up to stretch his back. After a moment of silent thought, his fingers and thumbs circling each other slowly, he reached down to the side of the stove and retrieved his bag of nevermar. Loki had already picked up the quill. Against his best judgement, Farden sat back and handed his notebook to the god. Loki didn’t need the mirrors. Farden hunched over and listened to the nib of the quill scratching on the paper. A god, scribbling out his own Book. He ignored the bizarreness of the situation and fished a tiny morsel of nevermar from inside the bag. Slowly, tentatively, hopelessly mindful of his last time with it, he slipped it into his mouth and began to chew.

The sweating began almost immediately, even before the numbness had a chance to spread past his tongue. Farden put his head in his hands and clamped his eyes shut, trying to ride out the panic that had clutched him in its iron fist. Loki could sense his sudden shift in mood, but he didn’t dare pause. He worked as fluidly, as swiftly as any scribe or scholar could dream of. ‘Why do you insist on poisoning yourself?’ he asked.

Farden didn’t answer for a while. When he did, it was in a small and strangled voice. ‘Because I have things inside of me that I need to kill,’ he whispered.

‘It doesn’t look like…’

‘Just shut up and keep scribing.’

Loki didn’t say another word. He melted back into his task, eager to let the song flow through his head again. The dark ink set into Farden’s skin began to glisten as the light grew and the sweating became more profuse. Farden tossed the nevermar to the floor and grit his teeth until they squeaked. His breathing came in strangled grunts. His skin pricked. It felt as though a snake had made its home in his stomach.

Even in the hours afterwards, when the sickening bite of the nevermar had passed, the panic remained. It was now solely Farden’s. His faithful crutch had suddenly deserted him. The sweet release had turned to choking ash. Without his nevermar, the memories he had spent so long burying would begin to bubble to the surface once again, like the pus of a festering wound. The imagery of that thought was not lost on Farden. He looked down at the spear-wound in his side, the other on his shoulder. They were still trying desperately to heal. The mage could imagine his mind doing the same in the coming weeks. The stitches and bandages he had put in place would be swept away, and he would be defenceless. Farden mumbled questions and fears to himself as a whirlwind of worries set about corroding him. Farden twitched and convulsed as the panic ebbed and flowed. His mind rambled on…