The Adorned (35 page)

“Get into the garden!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll put out the fire.”

There was a hard thump against the door. The wood bent backward. The laughter had stopped now; the street outside the door was silent. Tallisk’s face went stone still. He raised his sword with one hand, and with the other he reached for the bolt.

I grabbed him. “No. Come on.”

Another torch arced in, carelessly tossed. It fell between us, sparks flying out, near blinding me. I let out a yell. Tallisk shoved me backward, and I half fell across the stairs.

“Into the garden.
Now!
”

We ran down the corridor. Licks of flame danced across the carpet; they were creeping to the bannister. Tallisk pushed against the garden door—it was stuck fast. He put his shoulder against it.

“Getting hot in there, Blood-pet?”

It was Symön’s voice, from the other side of the garden door. They had gone over the wall, blocked our way out.

Tallisk roared and threw his weight against the door. It rocked but did not budge.

“Hope you roast,” Symön screamed, his voice cracking. “Hope you get
well
done, just like the rest of them!”

“We’ll go out a window,” Tallisk said. He pulled at my hand and we ran back, through clouds of smoke.

He kicked open the door to the parlor. A wave of heat drove us back, solid as a wall. The entire room was flame bathed, curtains and walls and chairs burning the color of the sun.

Tallisk flung down his sword. “No,
no.
”

I grabbed at him. “The basement. We can hide there. Close the door against the fire. There’s water, and—”

He shook his head. “We’ll choke to death if we stay in this house. We have to get out.” He jerked his head toward the stairs. “We’ll jump from a second-floor window, into the street.”

“What if they’ve tossed torches up there, too?”

“We have to
try
, Etan.”

I looked back. We were caught: the parlor was a furnace, and the fire had started eating at the stairs. We’d have to leap the flames. I felt the heat of them on my face, felt dizzy nausea clawing at my stomach.

He squeezed my hand. “Let’s go.”

He went first, taking the stairs two, three at a time. I ran behind him, panting. There was a crack. I felt myself slip, fire-licked wood disintegrating beneath me.

“Etan!”

Tallisk grabbed for me. I flung my hand out. All around me there was a roar, like a living thing. I felt his hand graze my fingertips.

I fell. I fell backward into fire. I saw Tallisk’s mouth form a scream I did not hear, saw his eyes go wide and wild. Then there was a hard black pain at the back of my skull, and I saw nothing.

Chapter Fifty-Four

The city burned; I do not know for how long.

I saw it in the awful waking edges of my drugged sleep. Whenever I opened my eyes, the sky was a perpetual sunrise, stinking of ash. After the fires finally started to die, I wondered how much of the city would survive...

Someone—I never discovered who—had found me splayed and soot stained in our ruined garden. I do not remember making it there. My rescuer brought me to a temple near Peretim’s western edge. The monks-penitent bandaged me and forced valerian tinctures down my throat. A priest chanted over me; I remember that. Remember his low, old voice as he called on Madame Death to be merciful with me.

It was a prayer for the dying.

I did not die. I woke from burning dreams to find myself alive in a narrow bed.

The priest, the one who had chanted my death prayer, leaned down over me with owlish concern. He had a kind, shadowy face, beardless and bald. “Can you hear me?”

I tried to nod and was rewarded with nothing but pain.

“What’s your name, my boy?”

I told him; it brought no recognition to his face. When I asked for Tallisk, he only shook his head and left me in what had nearly been my deathbed.

The monks’ tinctures and drugs numbed me and kept the world at a distance. I felt myself crying, tears soaked up by the gauze wrapped around my aching face. The monks-penitent came and changed my bandages and anointed my wounds with blessed salves.

The youngest of them, with wide earnest eyes, had whispered to me that they had the virtues of healing in them, that the Lady of Mercy had touched them with her shining hand. I had turned away from him as best I could, at that. Of the Lady of Mercy and her remit, I had seen precious little.

There were others in the temples, as wounded as me or more. I heard them crying in the night. Sometimes their cries stopped too abruptly, the rhythms of their breathing cut short. Sometimes the cries I heard were my own.

As the days dragged on—could they have become weeks? I wasn’t sure—I thought that I could hear less and less of us in the temple. We had either died or healed, I supposed. I was among the last still in my bed. When I finally looked up with clear eyes at one of the monks-penitent and asked for water, he blinked at me, goggled, and went to fetch the priest.

The head priest’s name was Brother Iyan; he pulled a chair over to sit next to my bed. He hovered his hands over me but did not touch me, as if he did not quite dare to offer that comfort.

“You were badly burned,” he said with slow care. “You are healing well, but there—there shall be scars.”

I had guessed as much. Half of me still felt near flensed. One side of my face, a shoulder, a swathe curling down my chest and back, and both my legs had been scorched. Without the monks, without their salves and tender care, I would have shriveled and curled into nothingness, a flower in flame.

“Who brought me here?” The words still came difficult.

“A woman, a Southerner. She did not give her name.”

I nodded slowly. “There was a man. A man in the house where I was. His name is Roberd Tallisk. Have you heard news of him?”

“No.” This time he answered swifter. “You asked that before—when you were—”

When I was delirious. I sagged back into the bed. “No news.”

“There are many missing.” He paused a moment. “Few of them will be found.”

“Ah, Brother.” I tried to laugh. “I thought your kind was in the business of hope.”

He touched the top of my head, lightly. It was unbandaged, my hair greasy and ill-kept. “Sleep now, Etan. You’ve still a while to heal.”

* * *

It was another week or more—time had become a slippery thing—before they removed the bandages for the last time. On that day, I made up my mind to leave.

There were no mirrors in the temple, but I saw my own ravaged skin well enough. In some places my injuries were almost unnoticeable, the healing skin pale and flat. In others there were strange new scars, curled like the lines of mountains on old maps. I touched them gently; in some places I felt nothing. In others I felt nothing save pain. Wherever I had been burned, the careful greenery Adorned on me had been erased, or had left a shadow of its former outline, motionless and twisted.

I bit my lip. The monk unwrapping the bandages stopped.

“Am I hurting you?”

I shook my head. I did not trust my voice.

“Shall I finish it?”

I nodded. He removed the last bandages from my ankles and feet and put the soothing salve on wherever aching skin showed. I closed my eyes. The pain seemed dulled now, but a new pain was sharp in me. Both the beauty of my ink and the magic of the Blood had been burned away; whatever I was, I was no longer Adorned.

The monk rose to his feet. “It is done.”

“Please—” I did not recognize my voice. “Please give me my clothes.”

He handed them to me, watching from the corner of his eye. As if I were a wild thing that might snap at him. When I had dressed, he seemed more comfortable. “There will be dinner tonight. You are well enough to join us at the table now.”

I shook my head. “No. I am leaving.”

“Leaving?” He looked horrified. “Where will you go?”

I swallowed back tears. “Into the city.”

He shook his head. “You should not.”

“Ah.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, wincing. “But I have to.”

Before I could make ready to leave, Brother Iyan came to see me. I had pulled on an old coat and my shoes. It had been a slow and careful process, my wounded skin complaining with each slight motion. I was still testing the new limits of my body. Still, I was well enough to stand and walk, well enough to leave. All that was left was pain; that I could stand. Staying here in a narrow room, watching the half-burned city from the window? That, I could not.

Brother Iyan lingered by the door. “Penitent Hestor tells me you are leaving.”

I folded my scorched old clothing carefully, putting it away in a rucksack the monks-penitent had given me. There was a loaf of bread in the sack, two apples, and a thick slice of salted fish; it seemed that trade had started trickling back into the city while I had been confined to my sickbed. “I am.”

“You are not healed.”

“I am healed enough.”

“The scarring will be worse if you do not stay and rest.”

I laughed. “How much worse can it become, Brother? For a man such as I?”

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking younger than his years—but then, most priests did, their manhoods laid on the altar of their calling. “The monks have given you the salve for your wounds?”

“Yes.” I went to move past him.

He did not hold me, but he turned slightly so the gap between us was narrowed, and he laid a careful hand on my shoulder. “You truly insist on leaving? You could stay here in the temple.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. You are kind to offer, but I can’t.”

“It is better here. There is still some respect for the houses of holiness, even in a time of anarchy.”

“I’ve never been at home in the houses of holiness, myself.” I shook my head again and slipped out from under his hand. “I am sorry, Brother, but I cannot stay. There are people I must find.”

“Would they not have come looking for you, if they could have?” His voice was gentle and ruthless.

I bit back a profanity. I was not in the mood for his logic. “Perhaps they did. Perhaps they could not find me.”

“That is true enough. But Etan...it is not time to go out there on your own. After the gates were broken, after the fires...the Blooded were dead or they were gone. The Council was brought down, and the law with it. It will take time for order to come again.”

“Who rules the city?”

“Rules?” He shrugged. “I do not know.” He hesitated a moment. “There is a new Council, of sorts. The Sword-nobles put down the worst of the trouble, and they have made promises enough to keep true anarchy at bay. I’ve been told that Lord Loren is their head, for now.”

“Loren.” I laughed hollowly, thinking of his candied lemons. “All the luck to him.”

“Look,” Brother Iyan said, sighing. “I will give you what I can.” He dug in his pockets and pressed some dirty coins into my hand. They were small and cold—two ral in total, perhaps. I stared down at them. “And some advice for free: leave the city. The people are still angry. They lost too much. Their children starved while the Blooded feasted. This new Council is too busy to chase down every vigilante. Those who think themselves wronged will turn on whoever they can.”

“What harm am I?” I spread my arms; the wounds on my back stung sharply at the motion. “Do I seem like I’ve done much ill lately?”

Brother Iyan shook his head, looking suddenly sad. “It’s not what you have done.” He touched my collarbone lightly. The edge of a leaf showed there, untouched by the fire, at my open collar. “It is what you are. A symbol. That is enough.”

I drew away from his touch and buttoned up my collar, pulling it as high as it could go. “There,” I said. There was an emptiness yawning in me, but I forced a smile. “Now no one will see.”

Brother Iyan nodded. “If I were you, Etan, I would leave the city. Go south. They are faring better there, with the trade from Suramm. Head to Coppermoss, maybe, or Perayan. They are good places.”

“And what then?” It hurt my face to smile, even thin and wry. “How shall I make my living there?”

“That I cannot help you with.”

I bowed my head. “You have helped enough. Good luck to you.”

“You’ll need it more than I,” he said, and he heaved a sigh. “You are not leaving the city, are you?”

“It is my home,” I said. “And all I love is here.”

“It’s gone up in flames,” he said, and for the first time I heard his voice tremble. Unshed tears shone in his eyes. “This city is scarred more than you, child. It will take it a long while to heal.”

“But still,” I said. I touched a hand to my chest. “It is only wounded.”

“Yes,” he said, and he turned away. “So we hope.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

The door of the temple shut behind me. I lifted my head and sniffed the air. The smell of the city had changed. There was still the top note of ash and the low stench of decay, not quite washed away, but it seemed deeper than that.

My clothes felt as if they were made for another man. With each motion, they pulled and dragged at the sensitive skin where I was half healed. I felt it with every step, and I walked slow and halting.

I had never been in the western city, but I could see the palace still standing at the center and the bend of the sun. I knew how to make my way home. Or at least, to where home had once been. I knew what the monks and the priest had told me, but still, I had to see for myself. I had to go to Nightwell Street.

The fires might have started in the mansions of the Blooded and the fine houses on streets like ours, but they had not been selective. The flames had cut chaotic swathes through Peretim. I saw houses like rotten teeth, blackened and hollowed, and next to them their untouched neighbors, the paint on their doors barely singed.

It had been early morning when I’d left the temple. Now it neared noon. I found the shaded doorstep of an empty, half-scorched house and sat there, marshaling my breaths. I took an apple out of my rucksack and ate it slowly. Across the road, I saw a single tree still standing healthy in a blasted grove, touched with the buds of new growth.