His touch cupped her cheek, gentle. He said, “Amethea.”
The lucid part of her mind watched her, howling, as she melted in his warmth. He touched her, held her; his attention was everything. All she wanted was his acceptance, that sense of belonging, that family, that need to be needed. She wanted him to look at her, to notice her, and she said his name in return, even as a part of her mind shrieked in fury at her own submission...
“Maugrim...”
* * *
Triqueta of the Banned was in absolute blackness.
She stood motionless, breathless, hands on weapons with her desert skin alive and trembling. Without her sight, she concentrated on her hearing, on feeling the air about her like some damned Kartian - the place she was in was large and warm, and the darkness seemed full of -
Threats.
A rough grip on her shoulder made her duck, grab the wrist and spin - but there were more hands, more than she could count. There was a press of bodies around her, and she was stumbling, suddenly, hard against a wall, wondering what the rhez was going on.
She heard Syke’s voice say, like a whip, “Ress.”
And there was light.
It was right in her face, too bright, an accusation. It made her blink and flinch backwards. She tried to raise her arm to cover her eyes but there were hands everywhere now, they were holding her back and down, pressing her into the wall and forbidding her to move.
She struggled, cursing. “What are you doing? What are you...?”
In the light, there was a blade, hard and fibrous, a worker’s tool.
“You’ve earned this.” Syke’s voice came again. “You know why.”
“Earned what?” She struggled harder, furious. “What are you -?”
Then the blade moved, buried its tip in her cheekbone.
Under the opal stone.
What?
Triq had seen Banned justice a couple of times in her life and the sight was an ugly one, swift and brutal.
This wasn’t happening. There was no way...
Syke! What did I
do
?
Now, in the light in front of her, was Ress’s face, calm and clear, his expression grim. Panicked at his closeness, his severity, she began to really struggle, dread closing her chest.
“No, no! I didn’t do anything! What the rhez d’you think you’re playing at? Get off me!”
It was Ress’s hand on the blade, his eyes that tracked the tip as he worked it carefully into her cheekbone, under the edge of the stone. Triq had no idea whether he could take the thing out, what would happen if he did.
A new voice said, “You caused the blight, Triq. And you abandoned your family.”
Dear Gods.
There, in the light was another face. A face like her own, masculine, older, a face with the same stones in his cheeks, the same lines, the same yellow eyes. Triqueta had not seen her errant desert sire since she was a small girl, raised among the dust and thievery of the trade-roads and ribbon-towns -
“No.” The word was horror, disbelief. “No. We had to stop him, we
had
to -”
The blade twisted and her voice ended in a shriek - a cry as much of outrage as pain.
“No! Damn you all to the rhez, you bastard sons of mares!” She fought against the hands that held her. “You can’t do this!”
From behind the light, Syke’s voice was flat, unimpressed with her denial.
“You’re no longer Banned, Triqueta, and you can no longer bear the stones of your sire’s banner. You have no family. If any of us see you again, it won’t be just a warning.”
“But I didn’t do anything! I was there, in Roviarath, I was trying to
help
-!” Again, the blade twisted, again, her voice scaled upwards. This time, there was a popping sensation, like an eyeball coming free of its socket, like a bursting boil, and then a welling of pain and loss, dizziness and fluid flooding in her cheekbone. She could feel the blood-warmth overflowing, streaming down the side of her face.
She felt sick. Her knees were starting to fold.
Ress’s expression didn’t change. Brutal and clear-eyed, he moved the blade to the other side of her face.
He said, “It’s not just the Banned, Triq. It’s Larred Jade. It’s the Varchinde entire. You’ve damned us all.”
“I didn’t
do
anything!”
Her sire said, “You left your family to die.”
“No! I came here to fight, I -
Ah!”
The blade went in again.
She was folding now, the taste of her own blood in her mouth, the warmth on her cheek a flood that was matting her hair, sticking in her ear, streaming down her jaw and into the collar of her shirt.
“I lost my mind,” Ress said, “because of you. Jayr and I will both die, struggling to reach something that doesn’t exist.”
“What? Ow!”
She struggled furiously, righteous and outraged. The blade twisted, vicious, digging into the bone, digging into her face and into her love of her family, breaking the ties and pulling her away.
The second stone popped from its socket and that warm rush of stickiness came again, thick dark blood streaking both cheeks as if she’d lost her eyes.
She howled fury, but her head spun. Her legs would no longer hold her and she slid down the wall to the floor.
And then the figures around her started kicking.
* * *
Redlock couldn’t breathe.
He was in darkness, lost. He was suffocating, stumbling, gagging, desperate to haul air past the knot in his chest. He slumped against the wall. One hand grappled for a hold, kept him upright, the other wrapped about his throat as if he would tear open his flesh.
And he coughed.
And he coughed.
And he
coughed.
He knew he’d been foolish, knew he should have let the hospice heal him. He should have had the patience, allowed the time for his ribs to mend. But he was Redlock, for the Gods’ sakes, he was Master Warrior, unassailable. Neither injury nor illness had slowed him for more than twenty returns.
Now, it seemed, the Count of Time was standing over him, one long grey hand reaching into his chest - and slowly crushing the life right out of him.
You bastard. I’m not done yet.
Oh yes you are, old man.
He was on his knees, not even knowing how he’d got there. His arms were wrapped about his chest as if he strove to hold himself together. He fought for control, to suck in one gasp of air, another, but the cough came again and now there were flecks of moisture on his lips and skin, scattering to the unseen floor.
He was going to die, here, alone, in the dark and the cold. Not a fighting death, not the death of a warrior, not facing some great creature or starved bweao, not saving the world or his friends - but alone, in a ditch, forgotten.
Then a voice in the darkness said, “Let me help you.”
And with it came a choice.
* * *
No.
The man’s arm was muscled and string-thin, writhing with faded tattoos and needle-scars. There were flesh-tunnels in his ears, and his face held a look of such absolute sincerity that it was hard to focus past it to the truth of what he offered.
Peace.
But at the cost of passion, of personality, of want and need and freedom.
He offered a drift of nothing, and he offered it like a prize.
No.
Ecko’s refusal was like the first rise of the tsunami.
No.
You won’t fucking do this to me.
* * *
He turned her against the wall, his hands over hers, his weight and strength behind her. He held her there, helpless, his breath warm on the back of her neck - held her just long enough for her to understand that he had complete control, just long enough that she was pushing back against him, craving despite herself, needing to feel the heat of his skin.
Little priestess.
She felt him laugh, his dark chuckle deep in his chest; she felt him hold her harder, hurting her hands against the stone wall.
You’ll do anything I say.
And then something in her baulked.
The rejection was as abrupt as it was absolute, a conviction she felt to the core of her being. Under the hot touch of Maugrim’s hands and breath and body, it was the strength of the stone under her hands, and it was the only thing that made sense.
She drew a breath, feeling herself solidify. She turned her head, tried to look round, to see him over and behind her. But as he pressed into her harder, mocking, her vision became a blur: his face was there but double and triple, his smirks layered one upon another and sliding away from her eyes.
He gripped her harder, hurting.
But she’d had enough. Like a prisoner taking hold of her fetters, she fought for her focus, to stand upright and pull away, to deny all of this.
Somewhere in her heart, she knew the truth:
This isn’t happening.
As she moved, he grabbed her hair, wrapped it round his hand and tried to force her back into the wall. He grabbed a wrist with the other hand, went to twist her arm up her back. He pressed himself into her more closely, still with that dark and tempting chuckle.
Little priestess.
Little girlie.
She was not going to take this. The hardness she felt made her angry, there was no lure of temptation - her resentment had crystallised into a savage knot of hate, as cold and strong as the stone.
I said no.
She wrenched her arm free, fought to stand straight. He grappled for her and missed, then punched the back of her neck making her see sparks and driving her almost to her knees, before yanking her back up again, hard enough to make her eyes water.
“You’re
mine,
Amethea. You gave yourself to me.”
“And I take myself
back.”
He pulled her hair harder, tugged her head back and up. She felt her entire understanding of the world spiral in on that one sensation, cling to it as if it were the only thing that made any sense.
This isn’t happening.
Amethea was a healer. She’d seen people in the most terrible pain, helped them focus through broken bones, through infection and loss, through fear and horror. And now, that focus was coalescing in the corners of her heart and mind.
Maugrim let her go, stood hard on the back of her knee.
“I’m not here.” Stumbling to the floor, she found it was stone - she remembered how it felt, its strength and solidity and calm. “I’m not here,” she repeated. It was something she could trust and rely upon, something that had been there for her once before. “I’m not here.”
She turned to look up at Maugrim, his lined face curled in scorn, and said it again, louder, “I’m not here.” As she heard herself voice the thought, so it gained authority and confidence. Her hand caressed the stone as if it was a friend. “I’m not here.” Her head still spun, but she could move, could find her feet and control the urge to throw up. “I’m not here.”
She got her feet under her, crouched there.
Maugrim’s face contorted and he came at her, fists and feet and hatred, but he was fading now, like smoke, dissipating in the pale light of a morning sky.
Her resolve strengthened. She lifted her head, stood up.
He fell back, face stretched into pure, naked hate.
She told him, “I’m not here.”
She watched him shout at her, and she watched him fade, ashes on the wind, carried by the roar she could hear in her head. She watched him fight to coalesce, to bring a last attempt to bear her down, but it was a fake, a feint, and she was just too damned strong.
“You hear me?” She roared at him in a rush, a blood-rush like combat; she was almost laughing. “I’m
not here!”
The room swam, her stomach with it, but she had this now, she had her belt-blade in her hands and by Saint Ascha and the Goddess herself she was going to -
Everything was gone.
In an eyeblink, she went from a fury and sunrise to a still, cold darkness - even as she heard her own cry ringing, she staggered from the lack of resistance. Her hands were empty of fury, of stone, of blade, of hope and courage. Her ears shrieked at her, after-echoes of her own defiance.
Or could she still hear screaming?
She carefully felt the back of her neck and the pounding pain was gone, as if it had never been.
But there was another noise in the dimness, a female voice, crying out in pain or horror - she couldn’t tell which.
What?
Amethea stumbled, uncomprehending, fell against a wall. She stood still, her heart thumping, her skin tense, wary, struggling to make out where the rhez she was, what she could see, what had just
happened...
Was this more trickery? More figments? Or was this cold on her skin real?
She shuddered, tried to gather her thoughts. She remembered - she had fallen, surrounded by the ruin of stone and flesh, by the injured and the twisted. She could see them as if they were all around her still, here in the dark, reaching with their open hands, their open wounds...
She remembered - pieces of legends. Aeona. Midden city, oubliette. The fading town that’d lived and died on the very edge of the Varchinde. A place for the lost.
A place that was real.
She stood upright, breathed deeply. Steadied herself.
Then she checked her body carefully for injuries, stretched her back and neck. She could see little, there was a stripe of light falling from an arrow-slit, high in the wall, and there...
Midden city.
There, in the tiny rectangle of illumination, were the people that the CityWardens of the Varchinde had not wanted. The people they’d kicked under the rug, the abandoned, the undesired and the undesirable, the criminals and the smugglers.
The inconvenient and the forgotten.
Amethea stared, heart pounding hard in her mouth. She prodded the remnants with a toe. The floor was a scatter of human remains - bones, bared and brown and broken. Some were fleshed still, though the meat had wasted to a thin covering. Skulls watched her with wide grins and empty eyes, some still had hair even, or glitters of terhnwood jewellery. Here and there were tattered fragments of garments, rotted to grey wisps.