Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (13 page)

The girl reacted to her gesture with surprise, and Silena
became convinced that this was all some sort of a con. Silena
immediately looked all around her, expecting to see an accomplice
stealing her blind while the girl distracted her with her charming
smile and disarming foibles. But there was no one; just the girl,
now looking slightly puzzled.
Silena focused her piercing gaze now on the young
woman’s face, looking for any sign of deception, and looking closer
at the blindfold. It appeared to be thick cloth, tied tightly around
the girl’s eyes, and appearing to her to be quite legitimate. Could
this girl really be for real? Silena had seen strange things over the
sojourns, and this was certainly threatening to top all of them.
She watched the girl’s face closely, but decided for some
reason she couldn’t quite fathom, to soften her tone.
“What game are you playing at, young one?”
The girl hesitated, turning her head as though looking
around. Silena suspected strongly now that the girl could see as
clearly as she herself could, and that the blindfold was a game, part
of a ploy to earn sympathy or lower suspicion.
“Game? I don’t understand,” the girl said, looking
confused.
To prove her point, Silena decided to be as direct with the
girl as she was with Silena, and swiftly reached out and snagged
the edge of the girl’s blindfold.
The girl, to Silena’s shock, was faster.
She didn’t flinch, but before Silena could react, the girl’s
hand was grasping her own gently but firmly, preventing her from
removing the blindfold. The girl possessed a strength that Silena
would have never suspected her to have, just based on how skinny
she looked. This girl was turning out to be full of mysteries.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked seriously.
For the first time, Silena heard a razor sharp edge to the
girl’s voice, and she knew that she had just entered a dangerous
new phase of the game.
Silena decided to wait it out and didn’t try to pull her hand
away, with the girl still firmly holding her wrist. Silena quickly
considered all her options and decided to return like for like, and
told her the truth. All of it.
“I don’t think that you’re really blind. I think it’s part of an
act you’re putting on, either to con people or to play for sympathy,
or maybe both. I wanted to expose that secret, and so I was going
to take off that blindfold so that I could expose your lies and we
could both put all of our blades on the table.”
The girl smirked briefly. Then, as though she were
handling a child, she removed Silena’s hand from her face,
replaced it with her other free hand, and pulled the blindfold up
over her forehead.
As soon as the blindfold was removed, and the girl named
Catelyn let go of her hand, Silena knew that she had been wrong.
So very, very wrong. Silena felt her head get light again.
Beneath the blindfold, where two eyes should have been,
the skin was ruined; bubbled and puckered flesh, dense with
striated, webbed scars. Where the eye sockets were, only two
depressions of mottled flesh, the eyelids melted shut permanently
by something.
The sight made Silena’s stomach flip over and her knees
wobbled. The scars appeared old, and Silena could tell that
whatever happened to have caused such damage, the girl had
suffered immensely when she had received them. She marveled at
just how strong this girl truly was, to have survived such an ordeal.
Such a will to live
, she thought.
As that thought bubbled up to her consciousness, Silena
once more felt something that she hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Sympathy.
And finally the name for the other feeling she had begun to
feel once more appeared in her mind, as though it had never left:
compassion. In that moment, although she couldn’t explain why,
she had an overwhelming desire to help this girl. So many things
came to her mind, words from the past, to try and express the
sadness that she felt in that moment.
“Child, I’m...I’m sorry,” was all she could muster.
The girl put on a wan smile and brought the blindfold back
down into place, precisely and expertly, and with at least this
secret revealed, Silena now began to comprehend just how strong
and talented and graceful the girl had to be to survive, to move, to
find the wall to live each day, in spite of her condition.
Neither of the women, young or old, spoke of the
establishment of trust that had just occurred, but Silena could
sense that both of them felt it and it smoothed the transition as
they moved right back to the business at hand.
“So, about the object I have for sale,” Catelyn said softly.
Out of habit, Silena put on her mask of cool detachment to
once again conduct business, but she knew that this was not going
to be anything at all like her normal deals.
“Well, I don’t know how much you know, but most of my
business in antiquities comes from thieves and cutthroats on one
end, and the Empire on the other. It’s clear to me that you’re not a
beggar, despite how you may be dressed, so let’s assume that you
legitimately have an item that carries some value.”
“That’s why I came to you. I‘ve...observed...all of the
vendors in this marketplace and of them all, you stood out to me as
a person I could trust not to stab me in the back or gouge me on
the price,” Catelyn said.
Now it was Silena’s turn to inject a little of the unknown
back into their transaction.
“Don’t be so sure about the second part. I will pay what I
think it’s worth to the Empire, and not a mark more. Although
they’re frequent customers, they enforce a particularly deep
discount. You know the meaning of that, yes?”
The girl smirked, and bit her lip. It was clear she had
anticipated some disappointment, but given what she could see of
the girl, she assumed that Catelyn had been hoping for lifechanging money. Silena was being honest though; the Empire
cared not one whit about keeping Silena in business. They would
pay whatever they wished to pay, and there was no negotiating
with the lapdogs who worked for the Emperor. If she shriveled up
tomorrow, they would simply buy and sell from someone else and
offer the same prices to them.
Still, Silena felt an odd compulsion to make this girl feel
better.
What is happening to me?
“Catelyn, let’s do it like this. You wait for me to close shop,
then let’s set a place to meet. You can show me this item of yours
and I’ll tell you if it will be worth your parting with. If I like it, I’ll
be honest with you and give you a fair price, as fair as I can offer
without undercutting myself, and then you can decide if you still
wish to sell.”
Silena surprised herself with her own words. But at
hearing this proposal, the girl smiled again, and Silena smiled back
without thinking, and although it was against her policy to do so,
she knew it was the right thing to do.
Catelyn spoke again, with a reverence and a tone that
Silena never heard anymore.
“Thank you Silena. You’re very kind, and I know I made
the right decision to come to you about this.” Catelyn reached out
and took Silena’s hand in hers, and now that some of the tension
between them had been removed, Silena let it happen. She could
feel the warmth of the girl’s hands, the skin a mixture of thickened
toughness on her palms and softer skin on the tops of her hands.
Catelyn clasped her hands in silence for a second, then
bowed with the barest hint of motion as she had before, and then
stepped away with a grace and nobility that Silena had forgotten
could exist in this world. Silena found that she couldn’t take her
eyes off of the girl, watching as she swiftly blended into the throng
of people crowding the marketplace.
Like a ghost among the dead,
Silena thought.
No, not a ghost. Like.
..and Silena swallowed to even think
such blasphemy. But she couldn’t help but finish the thought.
Like one of the Divines.
Silena didn’t know at what point it had happened, or how,
but she felt a tear fall from her eye and trace a path down her sootstained cheek. She quickly wiped it away, then shook herself from
her reverie and returned to hawking her wares.

After her victory against the rats, Catelyn had finally been
able to get more than a few prayers of uninterrupted sleep, and
upon waking, she felt almost whole again. She didn’t fully
understand what had happened to her the previous night, but
when she rose from her resting place in the corner of the
crawlspace, she tested her senses by quieting her mind and stilling
her body, and imagining herself standing inside of that bubble
once more.

The crawlspace seemed to appear within her mind,
looking to her almost like one of the sketches she had seen in the
faded yellow books of her childhood. There were no details, but
large shapes stood out in her mind; walls, floor, ceiling. Her
visualization of the space was incomplete and shifted with each
breath, almost as though it were a living thing, moving subtly this
way, then the other. It was jarring and disorienting and made her
stomach turn in circles at first, as her mind and body got used to
the sensations coming in from all around her.

Catelyn’s own breath caught in her throat, and she reached
out a hand tentatively, moving it close to where the wall was within
her mind. As she slowly moved her fingers towards the surface, the
area around the tips of her fingers solidified in her mental map of
the room and she grew more confident that something was right
there, just beneath her hand.

And then, it was. Exactly where it should have been.
Catelyn felt the same rush of exhilaration she had
experienced the previous night when she had thrown the chips of

roof tile, and sent the rats scurrying out of the attic. The cool,
warped wood felt incredible under her fingers. She let her fingers
linger there for a whisper, then she turned her head and the
picture of the crawlspace changed. She visualized it from another
angle now, could “see” the wall extend away from her and one of
the ceiling beams crossing the floor just half a pace off the floor of
the attic.

She crossed to it with confidence, reached out with her leg,
and set her foot down on top of it. The solid thick wood was right
where she had pictured it in her mind, and was rough under her
foot, and she felt like laughing.

Catelyn immediately bent to a knee, prostrated herself
with the sign of the Three and thanked the Divines for this
incredible gift. She didn’t know how or why They had seen fit to
bless her this way, but she knew that this was Their Providence. It
was how They were going to help her to survive.

Catelyn tried to think of the proper words to say, but all
that came to her were simple words, and she repeated them over
and over again.

Thank you. Thank you.
Catelyn spent that entire morning exploring her new
found ability, beginning in the crawlspace and gradually, as she
gained more confidence in utilizing this new talent, climbing down
to the top floor of the building she was in. As she moved, she
experimented with finding the limits of her bubble of awareness,
visualizing pushing it out with her arms, and pulling it in closely,
wrapping herself in sensations like a cozy blanket of feelings
around her.
In those moments she forgot all about the Empire, about
her losses, and she was just a young girl at play.
She would probably have spent all day in her building
testing herself and her abilities, but Catelyn began to feel the
familiar pains that indicated her level of hunger, a hunger she
would be ill advised to ignore.
Whistling softly to herself, Catelyn walked down the stairs
of the building she was beginning to consider her new home, and
made her way to the market plaza.

Catelyn crouched among the low rafters of a large, open
round room, her bubble trained on the meeting place she had
chosen for her meeting with Silena. She had spent the bulk of the
day scouting locations for her and Silena to meet without
interruption, and when she had settled on this spot, she had
returned to the marketplace briefly to whisper the location
casually to Silena before she packed up for the night.

Catelyn made sure that there was enough time for her to
be able to return to her roost to collect the artifact before the
meeting. She dressed in her thieves clothing, and hung the weapon
from her belt with a loop of coiled leather she had fashioned. Then
she made her way to the abandoned building where they were set
to discuss the conclusion of their business.

Catelyn had worked to find a place that was somewhat
open, but that also had an accessible approach and egress path
from above. Although the location she’d finally selected did have a
number of burned out buildings around it, where men could
potentially hide in an ambush, there were also a number of
pathways Catelyn could use to quickly get to the rooftops,
providing Catelyn with the advantage, as well as all the escape
routes she could possibly need.

Catelyn had felt a sense of trust beginning to form between
the two of them, but one could never be too careful.
She always felt nervous about establishing new
relationships, especially those that required her to trust someone
enough to sell her stolen goods to, without them in turn selling her
out to the Empire. Her usual fence when she had “delicate” items
to offload, an unusual man named Marko, would not be the right
person to handle this particular transaction. He was trustworthy
enough that she didn’t fear he would cheat her, but she had little
confidence that he could handle such a sale with the discretion
that she required. Marko was not known for his subtlety.
Catelyn had been very careful in selecting the buyer for
this particular item, and that caution was what had led her to
spend days in the merchant’s district, moving from stall to stall,
listening and assessing. She listened to each merchant as they
made sales to other customers, not just to the words they used but
to the unspoken signs of deception and malfeasance that she had
trained herself to detect. The cadence of their breathing, the
timing of their heartbeats, the slight pauses in speech which
marked a person as being unreliable. She smelled their sweat and
the clothing that they wore, some with the barest hints of perfumes
or powders, one of the petty acts of defiance that a number of the
people of the Seat indulged in. She felt the thrum of the air as
people went about their haggling.
And through it all, one of the merchants had stood out like
a candle in the dark. A guttering candle, surely, but a candle
nonetheless. When all was said and done, her “interviews” of
prospective merchants had all boiled down to a single name:
Silena.
And so it was that Catelyn began to spend a great deal of
time in Silena’s stall, pretending to examine items and listening to
her ply her trade. Before span’s end, Catelyn began to feel as
though she knew Silena. More than that, she had become
convinced that she could trust her.
She knew that Silena was older, at least as old as the
Emperor himself, for she spoke of the time before the reign of
Uriel III with a barely concealed reverence. No one besides Catelyn
had ever picked up on it, but Catelyn heard love and sadness at the
edge of Silena’s words when it came to her work, dealing daily in
reminders of the past.
Catelyn also knew that Silena had never cheated a
customer before in her life, whether selling or buying. Such
integrity was almost non-existent in the Seat during these times.
Silena drove a hard bargain to be sure, and she was being
completely honest about the Empire undercutting her profits, but
once a deal was finalized, Silena stuck to it and never backed out of
her word.
Although Catelyn had identified three merchants she felt
might be forthright with her, Silena had something unique about
her. Catelyn wasn’t entirely sure what made her stand out, but
there was some inherent trait to Silena that gave Catelyn the
confidence to finally approach her. After their initial conversation
earlier that morning, Catelyn was quite convinced that she had
made the right choice.
And yet she still found herself hunched in a corner in a
wide open space with multiple paths to scramble away safely,
should anything go wrong. Catelyn sighed, and supposed that this
level of vigilance was just the nature of this place, the taint of the
corruption that ran through the core of the Seat.
Silena had been agreeable to the location as well, perhaps
a bit too eagerly in Catelyn’s mind, which again made her wary
enough to wait quietly in the eaves and allow Silena be the one to
step out into the open first.
Based on the books she had read when she had been
younger, and Catelyn’s sense of the space and the objects she could
detect within what remained of the building, Catelyn believed that
this ruin was what they had once called a bank, a place where
people came to deposit and withdraw their money, entrusting it to
others for long stretches of time. She snickered when she
considered how impossible it would be for anyone living in the
Seat to ever trust another person to hold onto something as
precious as money.
But she also felt that somehow this place was appropriate,
that a place that had once been a symbol of trust and security
would serve as a good backdrop for the deal that she was about to
strike with someone she had never done business with before.
Catelyn shook off her distracting thoughts and returned
her focus to the present moment and the imminent meeting. From
where she crouched, she was almost entirely concealed, but with a
perfect vantage point from which to hear and smell Silena’s
approach. She expanded her bubble nervously, twirling her lucky
ring idly around her toe, waiting for Silena’s scent or heartbeat to
intrude upon the quiet scene. One of the other reasons that
Catelyn had chosen this location was because it had quite literally
been picked clean by dozens or even hundreds of scavengers since
the Emperor had walled off the Seat, and that would mean little
chance of an interruption as they conducted their exchange.
Still, Catelyn felt herself full of nervous energy, but not
entirely sure why. As she thought about it, she supposed that what
concerned her most about the upcoming transaction was the
notion of giving up the weapon while it was still a mystery to her.
Not simply because she just generally hated giving up on
mysteries, but because of the unique nature of this piece of history,
she had no idea of its true value.
She hoped that Silena would be able to tell her that it was
priceless, that Catelyn could fetch any price for the weapon. She
could use a large windfall to be certain. Catelyn was doing well
enough surviving, but she dreamed of doing better than just
surviving. She dreamed of being able to stop breaking into the
homes and offices of the few elites in the Seat, a list which was
becoming shorter with each of her escapades.
It was not only that thieving was dangerous work, it was
also simply not turning out to be as profitable as she had hoped it
would be. While the outward appearances and mannerisms of
many of the “wealthy” citizens had convinced her otherwise, it
turned out that even many of the so called “nobles” were living
hand to mouth under the restrictions of the Emperor.
In addition, she could only assume that Dane Eyrris was
not easily going to give up his prize, and looking back on it now,
she saw that her decision to provoke him by “signing” her work
might prove foolish, and would no doubt have him scouring the
city looking to extract a pound of flesh from her, not just to recover
his property.
Despite her mixed feelings, more than anything Catelyn
wished to be rid of the weapon and paid handsomely for it.
Understanding the value of the item was much lower on her list of
concerns, than being able to eat for the next several cycles. Or even
sojourns.
She had spent some of the time while she sat waiting for
Silena in a last whisper examination of the strange figures and
images embedded into the blade and handle of the weapon,
running her fingers over them again and again. She hoped that
before it left her possession for good, provided that she and Silena
could come to an arrangement and strike a deal, maybe these last
repetitions would provide the answer to her burning questions.
But the figures gave up no clues to their meaning, and the level of
detail on the flat of the blade was so complex and the
workmanship so fine, that Catelyn was forced to resign herself to
the fact of selling it and living with the mystery unsolved.
Still, while she waited patiently, half of her bubble trained
upon the entries into the ruined foyer, the other half she trained
upon her sense of touch on the forms of the spiraling bodies, in all
their exquisite detail, outstretched arms and legs forming an
unbroken chain of bodies, naked and unashamed. As she moved
from body to body her fingers explored the anatomy of the dozens
of figures, sometimes causing her cheeks to flush when she found
particularly detailed body parts.
When she moved her fingers quickly away from one such
discomfiting figures, she made a discovery that made her get to her
knees, pulling the weapon from its temporary leather sheath and
refocusing all of her senses on the weapon. It was extremely hard
to tell at the scale she could sense things with her fingers, but she
believed that each of the figures bore a unique face, meticulously
and faithfully faithful carved. The notion took Catelyn’s breath
away.
She had only had a handful of opportunities to study faces
using her fingers to trace the contours of a person’s face since
losing her sight, but based on those few experiences, she had
learned enough to be able to at least feel confident that she could
recognize people by touch alone. To Catelyn’s shock, these carved
faces, small though they were beneath her fingertips, were
sculpted with exacting detail and appeared to be as unique as the
people they were likely based on. Given the level of workmanship
of the weapon as a whole, this new fact didn’t shock her, but it was
still an amazing thing to her that she was now capable of
identifying individual faces of the people who had presumably
posed for the artist who had created this masterful work.
Her fingers traced across as many of the faces as she could
before Silena showed up, idly wondering who the people were, to
have been chosen as subjects carved into the handle. Were these
actually people that had lived in the past, or had the artist created
each of them from their own imagining?
For a heartbeat, as she let her fingers trace their way over
face after face, body after body, counting as she went, she
reconsidered her choice to sell.
The choice was soon taken from her, as her ears caught the
sound of approaching footsteps. Silena had arrived, her measured
pace standing out to Catelyn’s ear, followed by a heavier set
walking behind her. Catelyn wasn’t surprised to hear that Silena
had brought along a bodyguard. Most citizens of the Seat wouldn’t
have come to this part of town if they could avoid it, and if they
did, they would never do so alone. Catelyn wrapped her bubble
around the new arrivals, getting a mental map of the two
individuals.
As she stood up, preparing to greet them and begin
negotiations, Catelyn put the weapon back into its makeshift
sheath, and tamped down her idle fantasies about the figures on
the handle. She could make out a hurried, whispered instruction
passed from Silena to bodyguard, to stay put and simply make sure
no one else appeared and interfered with their deal. Catelyn found
it interesting, and reassuring, to learn that Silena had brought
someone to guard against outsiders, not to guard her against
Catelyn. She felt honored, though some might have perceived it
wrongly as an insult.
As Silena reached the middle of the bank’s open floor,
rubble strewn about her feet, some of it from before the Empire,
Catelyn moved from her vantage point and agilely leapt from pillar
to broken wall to rubble pile until she reached the ground. Where
she landed, she had put a rough stone chimney between herself
and Silena that would obscure her approach and, she hoped, give
her the element of surprise.
She moved closer, using the rough stone column as cover,
but Silena proved to be shrewder than Catelyn had presumed. If
she was surprised by Catelyn’s sudden appearance, nothing
registered in her demeanor. There was no acceleration of heart
rate, no sharp intake of breath, no smell of fear or shock. Catelyn
had been of the belief that she had picked the right buyer before,
but this impressed her even more.
Catelyn felt an impulse overtake her and she stopped,
smiled widely and waved to Silena, which elicited a sigh and a
slight shake of the head from the elder woman.
Catelyn was getting the distinct sense that perhaps Silena
thought she was a crazy person, and that notion made Catelyn
giggle quietly, considering the situation. Maybe she had cracked
somewhat after all, living so long on her own. Who was more
insane: the insane person or the person who was willing to trade
with the insane person?
The two women stood facing each other for a few seconds,
one last round of sizing the other up. Silena broke the silence, and
her voice was at ease.
“I’m here, but I would just as soon be someplace else. I
don’t like it here. Let me see what you have and we’ll both be able
to get back to our homes before the cannibals smell our blood.”
Catelyn hesitated, wondering if Silena’s last comment was
serious or not. Catelyn had encountered many horrifying things
throughout her sojourns of living in the slums of the Seat, but
never had she heard of cannibals roaming the streets.
She also spent a handful of breaths considering for the last
time those exquisitely carved figures running up and down along
the handle. She wondered what she was about to give up, and the
thought of its loss tugged at her, and she hoped this was the right
decision. But then she thought of the last six sojourns. The torture
of those early cycles, nearly starving, as she learned to survive and
cope in a world of darkness and terror. The absence she felt every
day, of being alone, unable to trust anyone but herself, and the
unfathomable pain of losing her loving parents.
She considered the soul crushing despair she felt at the
realization that, despite her belief in the Divines and Their gifts to
her, that this life with all of its nightmares and all of its cruelties
was all there is, that she was destined for nothing. That her life had
no meaning and her purpose was to do nothing more than suffer.
That she would be forced to spend the rest of her days scratching
in the dirt for the smallest of trifles, one step away from death’s
cradle always.
At the thought of all of that, Catelyn reached down and
unstrapped the weapon from her thigh, and presented it handle
first to Silena, who approached and took the item in her hand.
Silena had effectively concealed nearly all of her emotions
before, but on taking the weapon and laying her hands and eyes on
it, that completely changed. Catelyn knew that even someone
without her talents and senses would have seen a visible and
audible change in Silena’s demeanor, as she gasped in surprise and
her heart raced.