Blood Song (31 page)

“The sergeant said he’d track the man down if it takes him all his days.” She moved away, leaving Vaelin in a confusion of regret and relief. “He probably will. That or I’ll see him again, dragged through the doors with another wound for me to heal.”

“If he’s smart he’ll get himself on a ship and be far away by nightfall.”

Sherin shook her head. “People don’t leave this place, brother. No matter the threats against them they stay and live out their lives.”

He turned back to the window. The southern quarter was waking up to the day, the pale morning sky just taking on the stain of chimney smoke that would hang over the rooftops until nightfall, the shortening shadows revealing streets soiled with mingled refuse and excreta, dotted here and there the huddled forms of the drunk, drugged or homeless. Already he could hear vague shouts of conflict or hatred and wondered how many more would come through the doors today.

“Why?” he wondered. “Why stay in a place such as this?”

“I did,” she said. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“You were born here?”

She nodded. “I was lucky enough to complete my training in only two years. The Aspect offered me any posting in the Realm. I chose this one.”

The hesitancy in her voice told him he was probably the first person to hear her reveal so much of her past. “Because this is… home?”

“Because I felt this is where I needed to be.” She moved to the door. “We have work, brother.”

The next few days were hard but rewarding, not least because he was constantly in Sister Sherin’s presence. The parade of injured and ill coming through the door provided plenty of opportunity to increase his meagre healing skills as Sherin began to impart some of her knowledge, teaching him the best pattern to use when stitching a cut and the most effective mix of herbs for aches in the stomach or head. However, it quickly became obvious the skills she possessed would never be his, she had an eye and an ear for sickness so unerring it reminded him of his own affinity for the sword. Luckily there was no further need for him to display his skills as the level of aggression amongst patients had declined considerably since his first day. Word had spread through the southern quarter that there was a brother from the Sixth here and most of the more shady characters turning up to request treatment wisely kept their tongues still and violent urges in check.

The only negative aspect to his time in the Fifth was the constant attention of the other brothers and sisters. He had continued to take his meals with Sister Sherin late in the evening and they soon found themselves joined by a cluster of novices eager for Vaelin’s tales of life in the Sixth Order or a retelling of what they termed his ‘rescue of Sister Sherin’, a tale which seemed to have become a minor legend in only a few days. As ever, Sister Henna was his most attentive audience.

“Weren’t you scared, Brother?” she asked, wide brown eyes gazing up at him. “When the big brute was going to kill Sister Sherin? Didn’t it frighten you?”

Beside him, Sherin, who until now had borne the intrusion on her meal time with stoic calm, pointedly let her cutlery fall onto her plate with a loud clatter.

“I… have been trained to control my fear,” he replied, instantly realising how conceited it sounded. “Not as well as Sister Sherin, though,” he went on quickly. “She remained calm throughout.”

“Oh she never gets bothered by anything,” Henna waved a hand dismissively. “So, why didn’t you kill him?”

“Sister!” Brother Curlis exclaimed.

She lowered her gaze, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“It matters not, sister.” He patted her hand awkwardly, which seemed to make her blush even more.

“Brother Vaelin and I have had a long day,” Sister Sherin said. “We would like to eat in peace.”

Although she wasn’t a Mistress, her word evidently commanded obedience because their small audience quickly dispersed back to their rooms.

“They respect you,” Vaelin observed.

She shrugged. “Perhaps. But I am not liked here. I am envied and resented by most of my brothers and sisters. The Aspect warned me it might be this way.” Her tone indicated little concern, she was simply stating a fact.

“You could be judging them too harshly. Perhaps if you mixed with them more…”

“I am not here for them. The Fifth Order is the means by which I can help the people I need to help.”

“No room for friendship? A soul in whom to confide, share a burden?”

She gave him a guarded glance. “You said it yourself, brother. Things are different here.”

“Well, although you may not welcome it, I hope you know you have my friendship.”

She said nothing, sitting still, eyes fixed on her half-empty plate.

Was this how it was for my mother?
he wondered.
Was she so isolated by her abilities? Did they resent her too?
He found it hard to imagine. He remembered a woman of kindness, warmth and openness. She could never have been as closed to emotion as Sherin.
Sherin is formed by whatever happened to her beyond the gates,
he realised.
Out there in the southern quarter
.
My mother would have had a different life.
A thought occurred to him then, something he had never considered before.
Who was she before she came here? What was her family name? Who were my grandparents?

Suddenly preoccupied he rose from the table. “Sleep well, sister. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“It’s your last day tomorrow is it not?” she asked, looking up at him. Oddly her eyes seemed brighter than usual, it almost seemed she was tearful but the idea was absurd.

“It is. Although, I still hope to learn more before I leave.”

“Yes.” She looked away. “Yes of course. Sleep well.”

“And you, sister.”

Sleep was beyond him as he sat, legs crossed beneath him, and pondered the realisation that he knew almost nothing of his mother’s past. She was a sister of the Fifth Order, she married his father, she bore him a son, she died. That was all he knew. For that matter he knew just as little about his father. A soldier elevated by the King for bravery, later Battle Lord, city burner, father of a son and a daughter by different mothers. But who had he been before? He had no knowledge of where his father had been born, whether his grandfather had been a soldier or a farmer or neither.

So many questions, raging in his mind like a storm. He closed his eyes and sought to control his breathing as Master Sollis had taught him, a skill no doubt learned from the Aspect of the Fifth Order which in turn raised even more questions.
Focus,
he told himself.
Breathe, slow and even…

An hour later, the beat of his heart slowed and the storm in his mind cooling, he was roused by a soft but insistent knock at his door. Pausing to pull his shirt over his head he went to the door, finding Sister Henna there, smiling shyly.

“Brother,” she said, her voice little above a whisper. “Have I disturbed you?”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”
Surely she can’t want another story.
“The hour is late, sister. If you require something of me, perhaps it could wait until morning.”

“Require something?” Her smile broadened a little and, before he could stop her, she stepped past him into his cell. “I require your forgiveness brother, for my thoughtless words this evening.”

Vaelin’s calmed heart was beginning to thump again. “There is nothing to forgive…”

“Oh, but there is!” she whispered fiercely, moving close to him, making him step back, the door forced closed behind him. “I am such a stupid girl. I say such silly things. Thoughtless things.” She moved closer still, pressing against him, the feel of her ample breasts against his chest provoked an instant sheen of sweat and an unwelcome stirring in his groin. “Say you forgive me,” she implored, a faint sob in her voice as she lay her head on his chest. “Say you don’t hate me!”

“Erm.” He searched urgently through his mind for an appropriate response but life in the Order had failed to equip him for such things. “Of course I don’t hate you.” Gently he put his hands on her shoulders and eased her away from him, forcing a smile. “You shouldn’t worry over such a trifle.”

“Oh, but I do,” she assured him breathlessly. “The thought of offending you, of all people.” She looked away, ashamed. “It’s more than I could bear.”

“You care too much for my opinion, sister.” He reached behind him for the door handle. “You should go now…”

Her hand reached out, touching his chest, feeling the muscle beneath his shirt. “So hard,” she murmured. “So strong.”

“Sister.” He put his hand over hers. “This is not…”

She kissed him then, pressing close, her lips on his before he knew what had happened. The sensation was overwhelming, a torrent of unaccustomed feelings washing through his body.
This is wrong,
he thought as her tongue probed between his lips.
I should stop her. Right now… I must end this… Any second now…

The sound that saved him was faint at first, a plaintive note on the wind seeping through his window, almost missed by his preoccupation with Sister Henna’s lips, but something in it, something familiar, made him pause, pull away.

“Brother?” Sister Henna asked, the whisper of her breath caressing his lips.

“Can you hear that?”

A slight frown creased her brow. “I hear nothing.” She giggled and pressed close again. “But my heart beating, and yours…”

The sound grew, an unmistakable siren call.

“Wolf’s howl,” he said.

“A wolf in the city?” Sister Henna giggled again. “It’s just the wind, or a dog…”

“Dog’s don’t howl like that. And it’s not the wind. It’s a wolf. I saw a wolf once, in the forest.”
Just before an assassin tried to kill me
.

It would have been easily missed had he not spent years studying his opponents’ faces on the practice ground, searching for the ticks and subtle changes in expression that warned of an attack. And he saw it in hers, a brief flicker of decision in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t worry over such things,” she said, her left hand coming up to caress his face. “Forget your worries, brother. Let me help you for-”

The knife in her right hand came free of her robes in a blur, the steel shining bright as it arced towards his neck. It was a practised move, executed with the speed and precision of an expert.

Vaelin twisted, the knife leaving a scratch on his shoulder, his right arm thrusting open handed into her chest, propelling her back to collide with the far wall. She rebounded quickly, a look of feline hatred on her face, leaping, spinning a kick at his head and bringing the knife round to slash at his belly. He dodged the kick and caught her wrist, twisting, hearing the crack, forcing down a spasm of revulsion.
She’s not a girl, she’s not a sister, she’s an enemy.

Her free hand came round in a punch, palm flat and fore-knuckles extended, aimed at the base of his nose, a blow he recognised from Master Intris’s lessons, a killing blow. He moved his head, taking the punch on his brow, shaking off the sting of it and gripping her hard on the neck, forcing her against the wall. She thrashed, hissing, nails scraping at his face. He forced her head back, the bones of her neck straining, lifting her off her feet, tightening his grip to subdue her struggles.

“You are very skilled, sister,” he observed.

A grunt of pained fury escaped her throat. Her skin felt hot against his hand.

“Perhaps you could tell me where you learned such skills, and why you felt the need to practice them on me.”

Her eyes, shining bright amidst the flushed, red mask of her face, flicked to the rip in his shirt and the shallow scar beneath. A smile, ugly and full of malice, twisted her lips. “Feeling… well, brother?” she grated through spittle. “You don’t… have time… to save her now.”

He felt it then, the heat rising in his chest, the fresh slick of sweat washing over him, a faint greyness creeping into the corners of his eyes.
Poison! Poison on the blade.

He leaned close, his face inches from hers, meeting the hatred in her eyes. “Save who?”

Her horrible smile widened into a grotesque laugh. “Once… there were... seven!” she told him, the hatred in her eyes shining like a lantern in the dark.

Suddenly she jerked her head back, forcing her mouth open, then clamping it shut with a loud clack of colliding teeth. She began to writhe in his grasp, shuddering uncontrollably, froth spouting from her mouth. He released his grip, letting her fall to the floor where she thrashed, feet slapping the tiles, before laying still, eyes wide and unblinking, lifeless.

Vaelin stared at her, sweat beading his forehead, the heat in his chest building to a fire.

Poison on the blade… You don’t have time to save her now… Once there were seven…You don’t have time to save her… Save her… SAVE HER!

The Aspect!

He went to where his sword was propped against the wall, tearing it free of the scabbard, dragging the door open, sprinting along the corridor to the stairwell.

Poison on the blade…
How long did he have? He chased the thought from his mind.
Long enough!
he decided fiercely, leaping up the steps three at a time.
I have long enough.

The Aspect’s rooms were on the top floor. He got there in seconds, running along the corridor, seeing her door ahead, finding no sign of a threat…

The blade was a sliver of light in the shadows, a half-crescent of steel, fast and skilful, it should have taken his head off at the shoulders. He ducked it, going into a roll, feeling the wind rush as the sword bit the air above him, coming to his feet, forming the parry stance in the same movement, the sword blade clashing with his own. He whirled, going down on one knee, sword arm fully extended, his arm jarring as his blade met flesh, drawing a stifled shout of pain and brief rainfall spatter of blood on floor tiles. His attacker wore cotton garments of black, a mask over his face, soot smeared on the brows and eye lids. His eyes glared up at Vaelin from the floor as he clutched at the deep gash in his thigh, not in anger but shocked surprise.