Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (12 page)

When Catelyn woke, she heard the soft cooing of doves
from outside, in the eaves above her roost. She stretched her body
like a cat, fingers and toes reaching out above and below her, and
she sighed in satisfaction.

She stood and walked to the privy to make water, and then
climbed downstairs where she washed her hands and face, and
broke her fast on a heel of stale bread which she had pilfered from
a market stall days before, with a helping of some fruit she had
dried from last season. It was not nearly enough to fill her
stomach, but it took some of the edge off of her hunger. She was
used to not eating very much, although she didn’t like how her ribs
stood out and she ran a hand over them self-consciously.

Although she made a point of keeping herself to one or
two excursions per cycle to minimize her risks and her exposure,
she knew that she was needing more food the older she got. Soon
she would be a woman grown, and that would necessitate more
sustenance, which would in turn mean more risk, but not if she
starved to death before that.

With most of her immediate needs taken care of, she
climbed back up the trap door and stepped over to where she had
lay the case after her examination of the weapon the night before.
She opened the case and picked it up once more, and knelt down
to conduct another thorough look with her fingers and hands.

After further study of the weapon, she was no closer to
understanding it than she had been the night before. She’d hoped
maybe after a good rest, she could perceive something that she had
missed on her first inspection, but this second look had turned out
to be just as fruitless as the first. It was clearly an exquisitely
crafted weapon, that much was obvious, but aside from that fact
nothing stood out to her senses. Although she could understand
how it had captivated Dane Eyrris’ attention and sparked his
greed, she had to admit that it was beginning to seem hardly worth
risking one’s life over, despite the level of craftsmanship it
represented. But then, Catelyn had very different ideas from most
people in the Seat about the value of human life.

And so, she set the weapon back down in its case, and
began formulating potential plans for how she would go about
getting rid of it. She ran different scenarios over in her mind as she
disrobed and threw on a clean pair of clothes. She put on a
sleeveless shirt and loose, tattered trousers; the latter she had been
quite fortunate to have found abandoned in an alley. They had
smelled of something rank when she’d found them, but after
boiling them twice, they finally stopped reeking and were one of
the most comfortable items she owned.

Once mostly dressed, she came to the conclusion that she
just didn’t know enough about the sale of antiquities to sell
something so old, and of such value. But she had encountered one
or two dealers in the merchant district who might know more. The
merchant district was much larger than the market plaza near her
block, and she had been there a few times to acquire things she
couldn’t find through her local merchants. She decided that it
would be a worthwhile place to start.

At the very least, she could surreptitiously start making
inquiries. She was in no hurry to sell the item. In fact, she began to
suspect that it might be better to sit on it for a while, as she was
fairly certain that Dane Eyrris would be checking every merchant
in the Seat for his merchandise to show up suddenly, and she was
sure that if he managed to find her buyer, he could be persuasive
enough to trace the item back to her, somehow.

She reached up and ran her fingers through her tangled
hair, working out the mats she found and pulling it back so that
she could tie it back into a ponytail. She realized that she would
need to wash it again soon. With her hair pulled tight, she threw
on a beige kerchief and tucked up as many stray strands of hair as
she could, hiding all evidence of her dirty red hair.

Catelyn normally relished her hair, precisely because even
just having it was one of the crimes she committed every day. Her
parents had, when they were alive, obeyed the Imperial decree
forbidding residents of the Seat from growing their hair beyond a
certain length. But once they had been killed, Catelyn decided that
she would never again submit herself to those laws, and she
searched, bartered and begged for any coverings that she could use
to flout that particular law. She had found, stolen and purchased a
number of kerchiefs and other head coverings throughout the
sojourns that allowed her to grow her hair out in secret.

When she went out on her nightly excursions, she knew
that she risked her life regardless, so she typically went with her
head uncovered. But on days like this when she needed to go into
the Seat during the daylight prayers, and into the heart of the
merchant district at that, it wouldn’t do her any good to so boldly
antagonize the Imperials with her defiance.

As always she wore nothing on her feet. She had grown up
never needing shoes, and she had not since found a compelling
reason to find a pair. Of course, she had her lucky ring, loosely
worn around the middle toe on her right foot. It was not
extravagant or decorative; it was a simple band of metal she had
found in the rubble one day but she wore it to remind her that she
had survived. That through everything she’d been through, she had
been strong enough to make it.

She donned a cloak as well, wrapped her blindfold around
her head and pulled the strip of cloth down over her eyes, then
flipped the hood of the cloak back to lay against her shoulders. If
needed, it would be ready to pull up at a moment’s notice if
anything happened and she needed to hide. She imagined what
she must look like, and chuckled to herself at the ludicrousness of
her appearance, but it would serve as an effective disguise for what
she needed to do.

As Catelyn climbed up and out of her roost, sliding the
hidden panel back into place, completely obscuring the fact that
anyone lived within, she hummed a tune to herself and realized
that she was actually rather happy. Then her stomach growled, and
she smirked. It was time to find a buyer for her new merchandise.

Silena shooed a pair of urchins away from her stall,
watching until they were out of sight as the two grubby children
glared angrily back at her. Chosen they might be, but that didn’t
give them any more right to loiter and drive away her paying
customers. She had been watching them eye her wares for several
whispers nearby, where they had been sneaking looks at one of her
more valuable treasures: a silver-lined teapot from the Before.

Silena sometimes wondered why she even bothered selling
such items here to the residents of the Seat. Even though this was
the merchant’s district, the people who lived here were still poorer
than dirt, and none of them had any use for such wares, and most
of the ignorant rabble regarded them as curiosities, nothing more.

They certainly had no eye for the true value of such relics
from their own history. The honest truth though, was that despite
their failure at generating revenue for her modest business, such
antiquities did a fair job of attracting lookie-loos interested in
peeking at a piece of the past. And that had it’s benefits too, as it
resulted in people lingering, which gave her the chance to talk
them into looking at something more practical that they would
spend money on. And Silena was particularly talented at matching
items with buyers.

But the best reason for her to continue to put such items
out on display was that it made her stall seem more important and
highly trafficked, which helped her reputation as a business. So
she supposed it was an acceptable trade-off.

Still, it’s not like how it was in the older days,
she thought
to herself with regret.
Back when the Walls had gone up for good, Silena had
become one of the more successful black marketeers in the Seat
initially. She had a ruthless side that served her well in the
cutthroat world of the Empire. But over time, as the Seat grew
more and more isolated, her favor had fallen. The Imperial “tax
collectors” demanded more and more marks from her every
sojourn, and when she complained about their unfairness, even
going so far as to suggest organizing a protest, they responded by
going after her family in the north end of the city.
She had watched as nine members of her kin had been
killed that day, until finally Silena, wailing and pleading,
convinced them that she would comply with whatever they
demanded. She had no choice. No one did. She lived with the
consequences of her defiance from that day onward. She would
never forget what the Empire had done to her, and she would
never forgive but she saw the futility in resistance and never again
raised her voice against the Empire.
But one need not forgive to conduct trade, and despite her
personal feelings, she was a realist about her situation and where
much of her continued fortune came from. The Imperials did need
her at times, and they were the only buyers for some of her wares,
especially some of the rarer relics from the Before.
Every span, a representative from the trade bureau of the
Empire would stop by her stall with a list of items they were
seeking, and they would take from her a number of curiosities and
knick knacks, seemingly at random. She was never one to ask
questions, but sometimes the Empire’s requests were downright
unusual.
At least they pay for them
, she thought to herself.
Many times, she wondered why they didn’t simply take
them, as after the incident she was sure that they knew how
completely they had broken her, but she wasn’t in a position to
argue nor would she care to. “Never turn away a paying customer”
was her motto.
Although she was willing to take money from them, she
still saw them as brutes who had killed her family. She was also
aware that most of them had probably been put into the position of
acting on their orders or their own families would have suffered
the same consequences of her family.
Not that she believed it excused what they had done, but
she could at least look at the deeper picture and see that, if placed
in a similar situation, she might have made the same choice as
those men. At least, that thought helped her to sleep at night
without slitting her wrists in utter despair, even if she knew it to be
a sickening twisting of the world that once had been.
Her feelings about the two men who had brought all of this
to bear, Uriel the Third of His Name and the Most Holy Emperor,
and his commander, the man who carried out such horrors, were
quite different. She considered the Emperor to be nothing less
than a villain of the highest order. Silena had never met the man or
even seen him before, but she devoutly swore to the Divines that if
he ever stood here in front of her, she would do whatever she could
to make an end of him, even if it cost her own life. And Ortis, the
one they called the Butcher, she regarded as simply, wholly evil.
An unthinking, unfeeling savage.
She imagined the Empire as a serpent, a poisonous adder
treading the world. She had no choice but to deal with the body,
but she imagined a day when the head might be severed, and then
the world would see a real change.
Silena had no illusions about the world that existed within
the walls of the Empire, within the heart of the Seat. She had seen
twenty sojourns when she had been relocated by the Imperial
decree, and she had watched as the Empire corrupted everything
that was good and stamped out every trace of opposition. Along
with thousands of her fellow countrymen and women, Silena
found herself witness to the butchering of a once great nation at
the hands of a madman with a god complex.
She idly wondered that Uriel so believed his own divinity
that he might be tickled to believe that he was contributing to even
petty crimes such as the disreputable goods she traded in.
Ah, but enough of your foolish fancies, old woman. Get
back to work!
she chided herself.
Silena went back to arranging one of the shelves full of
miscellaneous items, mostly several types of devices that people in
the Before used for food preparation, none of which actually
worked now, when she caught an unwelcome sight from the corner
of her eye.
The strange girl was back again.
Inwardly Silena cringed, then perked up, alert as a hawk
watching a mouse flitting across a field. The girl was an infrequent
visitor to the marketplace, but when she did appear she made
everyone nervous. Though the girl had never caused trouble, she
just had an odd way about her that unsettled every vendor in the
area. What made things worse, at least for Silena, was that she was
most certainly not a paying customer.
I can always spot them
, she thought smugly.
The girl had first appeared three spans ago, wearing a
ridiculous looking getup; baggy cloak covering her shoulders, a
scarf wrapped around her head and a strip of cloth wound around
her face. She wore a shoddy shirt and trousers and no shoes. Even
through the clothing, Silena could see that the girl was stick-thin
and pathetic and she immediately wondered what had brought the
girl to this side of the Seat at all. Persons as poor as she clearly was
never came to the merchant’s district for goods, as they wouldn’t
have the marks to buy even the scraps from the least expensive
merchants.
And yet, the girl came every day for spans, spending her
visits browsing the foodstuffs mostly, probably fantasizing about
what it would be like to eat so well, and from time to time she
would pick up a few odds and ends from the general goods carts,
but she never bought anything. Oh, she would stop by cart after
cart, every time she visited the market, but she simply picked up
object after object, turning them over in her hands and then
putting them back.
All of the merchants talked about the blindfold she wore,
with most remarking that the girl moved too confidently, and
acted in a way that was counter to someone who was genuinely
blind. Silena could not understand how the girl, apparently blind,
never stubbed a toe or stumbled or stepped on anything
dangerous.
She suspected the girl was in fact a con artist, and the
blindfold was just part of an act to lure others into sympathy for
herself as a poor wretched little blind girl. Beggars and their like
were known for such deceptions. Silena was convinced that the girl
was somehow pilfering food from the vendors, that she had to be
taking something, else why continue to keep coming? But when
she asked her fellow merchants if they were missing anything, they
all claimed that everything was accounted for when she walked
away.
No one even knew the girl’s name or if she could even
speak, for she had never responded whenever Silena or any of the
other merchants had tried talking to her, and eventually Silena had
given up, simply waiting warily while the girl amused herself and
then moved on. The other merchants had taken to calling her the
Tatty Girl. Maybe she wasn’t a thief, maybe she really was just
some ignorantly hopeful wretch looking to fulfill a fantasy or three
each day, but for Silena, it came down to one simple truth.
She frightened away customers with her odd ways. And
now here she was again, dressed once more in her strange
costume, and Silena puffed herself up in preparation to shoo her
off this time. She would have no more of this mangy denizen
harassing her and driving away business.
As the girl approached, Silena had a hard time not scoffing
once more at her appearance. Shoeless, dressed in filthy rags from
head to knees, she looked like nothing less than a spectre risen
from her grave.
When the thought occurred to her, she made the sign of
the Three, two fingers of the right hand from forehead, to lips,
then to heart, a warding to keep away the spirits of the dead. To
make matters worse, Silena and the other vendors had discussed
how, not only did the girl appear as a ghost from the ancient
stories, but she had the unsettling tendency of vanishing like one
too. One breath she was there, the next breath she was gone, as
though she had dissolved into the air.
Silena, despite mostly having given up practicing her faith
many sojourns ago, still believed in the Divines and in Their
power, even if she did presume that They had long ago abandoned
Exeter in favor of some other realm or universe.
Looking at the girl close up now, seeing her approach
cautiously, Silena felt something change in her assessment and for
a reason she couldn’t fully explain, she began to wonder what
troubles had followed this young woman that could cause her to
look and behave so unusually.
Despite her earlier misgivings, Silena had to grudgingly
admit that the girl had never stolen a single item from her or any
of the other vendors, and rather than simply shoo the girl away,
she made the decision to let the girl approach, and see what might
happen. But that didn’t stop her from going on high alert as she
walked toward Silena’s stall now.
And now that she had opened herself to the girl’s
approach, Silena could see that something was different about the
girl this time. Normally, when she appeared in the market, she
slowly, lithely made her way from stall to stall, taking her time and
seeming to genuinely give each vendor a slice of her time, as
though she had not a care in the world. But today, the girl moved
with purpose and direction, making a beeline straight for Silena’s
stall, and this caught her off guard. That was the first surprise of
the day for Silena.
The second came when the girl stopped right in front of
Silena, looked her in the eye, if the girl could be said to “look” at
all, and opened her mouth to speak.
“You’re name is Silena, right? You deal in antiquities?” the
girl said simply.
The voice that came out of that partially scarred face was
surprisingly clear and young, and the tone of her speech kind and
warm. The questions were completely benign and ordinary, and
yet something about it made Silena’s heart leap into her throat,
and she felt a moment of disorientation, without understanding
why.
The phrasing of the girl’s words, the vocabulary and the
confidence in such a young woman conspired to make Silena’s
head feel light, and she had to steady herself, then narrowed her
eyes in suspicion. Something was most definitely not right with
this picture.
Silena regained her composure and felt the fluttering in
her chest recede. She didn’t know why she had reacted so strongly
to something so innocent, but Silena was shrewd and knew better
than to play her hand with this good of a con artist. She decided to
string this along to see where it would lead.
“So, she speaks after all. You know, girl, all those times
that you’ve stood there like that, fingering my goods and ignoring
me as I blathered to myself, you could have had the decency to at
least say hello.” Silena let the barest hint of anger into her voice as
she finished speaking, just to see how the girl would react.
To Silena’s surprise, the girl’s cheeks, which were already
rosy from the web of ruined flesh protruding from under the
blindfold, colored in embarrassment.
She sputtered and said “I’m...I’m sorry. I just...”
The girl looked sheepish and flustered now, as though she
had been caught doing something she wasn’t confident about with
herself, which stood in stark contrast to the confidence of her
strides and the way she moved. She had the look of someone who
had rehearsed an opening, but had no idea what to do when the
response she expected was turned on its head.
Maybe she’s not so savvy after all
, Silena thought.
The girl collected her thoughts and continued.
“I never know who to trust, so I don’t trust anyone,” she
flatly stated.
Silena leaned in slightly to examine the girls face. She
sounded completely sincere, and even more surprising was how
honest and open the girl was being. She normally liked to look into
a person’s eyes, which she used to gauge their honesty, but Silena
had to give the girl credit for speaking so bluntly.
“A wise move in a place like this.” Silena admitted.
She still didn’t trust the girl, but the girl had shown her
something that she hadn’t seen in a long time, and Silena decided
that maybe she was worthy of being given a chance. Still, Silena
wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
“You know who I am, but I don’t know you, so you have
me at a disadvantage, and I won’t abide that. Tell me your name
and your business or get gone. I’ve no time for idle chit-chat,”
Silena stated.
The girl, almost involuntarily, bowed at the waist slightly
in greeting, something else that Silena hadn’t seen from anyone
since the time before Uriel III walled up the Seat for good. The girl
was clearly no older than seventeen...born decades after the Seat
had irrevocably changed.
How does she know of such customs?
“My name is Catelyn.” The girl stated it plainly, and
without preamble or further illumination.
Silena could say this at least, she liked the direct way this
girl conducted herself.
“I have something I would like to sell.”
Now Silena was truly intrigued, and she raised her
eyebrow. But at the prospects of acquiring a new item, Silena
switched over to all business.
“Really? And what makes you think that I would be
interested in anything a street rat like you has?” Silena decided to
test the girl’s negotiating skill. She thrust out her chest and put
hands on hips, challenging the girl to deliver.
The girl simply smiled, and when she did, for some reason
which Silena could neither explain nor understand, something
inside of her...shifted. Her heart fluttered again, and her palms
grew clammy.
Feelings she thought long buried surfaced and threatened
to overflow out of her, but she could put no name to what it was
she felt. It made her uncomfortable and yet it warmed her at the
same time, and to cover how discomfited she felt she crossed her
arms across her chest defensively.