Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (23 page)

Ortis felt his heart swell with something foreign as this
memory played out, and then like a spark dancing away from the
flame, the memory was carried away, torn from him and replaced
with flame and soot and death and cold, dead iron gripped in his
hands.
He collapsed to his knees, tears streaming down his face,
and watched this slip of a girl limp away, propped up by two
younger children maybe half her age. Even wounded as she clearly
was, she moved with such grace and lightness that he became
convinced that he was watching something holy. In the midst of
death and destruction, he envisioned her glowing in the light of the
flames with perfect majesty and dignity.
Ortis strained his neck, pressing his face as close as he
could to the bars of the iron wall, wiping the tears to clear his sight
so that he could see the face of this spirit. He wished to know her,
and to ask her by what magic this girl had managed to awaken
something human in him.
He noticed the dark strip of cloth tied around her eyes,
and had presumed initially that it had simply been to protect her
eyes from the smoke or the glass, but he could see now see the
scarring upon her face, catching the light of the flames and
revealing the ruined flesh where her eyes should have been and
realized that she wore it because she was blind.
Even more shocking, as Ortis stared, she turned her head
to face him directly. She had no way to see, and yet she was clearly
looking right at him. Impossible as it seemed, she knew he was
there, for she quickly gathered the two children with her, and the
three of them hobbled as fast as they could in the opposite
direction, down the alley and out of sight. She occasionally turned
her head back, looking over her shoulder at him as though she
were able to see if he followed or raised an alarm.
To Ortis’ own surprise, he did neither. Ortis remained
kneeling, rooted to the spot, unable to peel his eyes from the flight
of that wounded bird who had just landed in his bleak world,
bringing with her the sense of things he could not understand,
things he had become convinced were long dead.
He could identify at least one of them, however. Hope.
Hope for what, or why, he couldn’t say. But it was hope.
He knew it as certainly as he knew the shape of his own face in the
mirror. And as certainly as he now felt his own immense shame at
the life he had led.
A ghost of an emotion, perhaps, flitting into his soul one
breath and then out again in the next, leaving a stain of itself
behind.
He stood, unheeding of the joyous hoots and cries of his
men as the house beyond the wall collapsed into its own
foundation, and unconcerned and unashamed of the tears which
streamed down his face unabated.
Ortis had never felt such exquisite pain in his entire life.
And yet, through that pain, Ortis knew deeply that he had never
wanted to be more alive on any other day in his life than he did at
that very moment.
He had just been reborn.
And Ortis swore that was the last night he would ever see
the Emperor again.

Catelyn continued to train her bubble behind her as she
moved clumsily from block to block, watching for pursuit, leading
the two girls as best she could away from the infernal scene they
had just survived. She was barely holding on to consciousness, and
had to block out the pain of countless cuts, burns, bruises and
probably a dislocated shoulder, but she was determined to get the
girls somewhere safe. She was actually rather impressed with the
ability of the girls to keep up with her, without much complaining
from them, besides sore feet.

Ever since leaving the alley, Catelyn had debated what she
would do with the girls. They couldn’t stay with her; she was barely
equipped to keep herself from starving and she couldn’t take
responsibility for caring for two young children. She would also
have her own injuries to care for in the next few days. Taking them
to her roost would put them all at significant risk.

Although she had no reason to suspect that the Imperial
soldiers knew who she was or where she lived, at least one
Imperial soldier had witnessed their escape. She had sensed him,
breathlessly watching them from just beyond the estate’s wall.
She’d heard as his breath caught in his throat, and his heartbeat
had thrummed at her like a drum, loud and strong. Yet he had
raised no alarm, no cry for help, and had simply watched them
depart.

Still, despite that unusual observer, she had not survived
this long by being careless, and she was not going to stop now.
That meant the girls would not be able to stay with her. Catelyn
felt as though her roost was compromised, and she would need to
put her exit strategy into action. She had never hoped to need to
use it, but this seemed like the necessary course of action, given all
that had just happened.

Before she could restart her life, however, she needed to
give these two girls a chance at the same thing. Elexia and Sera
deserved that much. No, they deserved more, but Catelyn could
only give them this slim chance.

There were certainly a number of options available to her,
though Catelyn had hoped that the simplest would be the obvious
choice.

“Where are your parents,” she asked them, after their first
stop in one of the alleyways to rest their feet for a moment.
“Why do you want to know about them?” Elexia asked, a
dangerous note in her voice.
“Don’t you want to return to them?” Catelyn asked.
The girls, both of them, swallowed hard, but remained
silent. Catelyn knew the response well. She had heard the same
silence before, with a few of the other chosen kids she had known
growing up on the streets in the Seat.
Many parents in the Seat had vices of their own; vices
which necessitated a steady flow of income to maintain. Desperate
people do desperate things, and it was not uncommon for parents
in such situations to sell or loan their children to predators like the
men of the Sado-Sexual Elite, and Catelyn knew how the two girls
had come to be in the home of Dane Callum this night. Catelyn
didn’t press for further information.
“What about any friends or other relatives?” she
wondered.
The girls still remained silent.
Catelyn sighed, and Elexia piped up with her unsteady
voice.
“I thought...I guess I thought we would be staying with
you.”
Catelyn felt her heart sink into her stomach. She felt the
depth of the sadness and isolation in the girl’s voice, and she
wished that things could be different, that things made more sense
and that she could take them both in, raising them as younger
sisters. But as much as she longed to take these girl’s pain away,
she knew that she would not be capable of being what they needed
her to be. Catelyn had her own pain and loneliness which ate away
at her.
She idly wondered if the Divines were sending these girls
to her, just as they had apparently sent the artifact, but having
walked away from this night with her life, she was beginning to
realize that her faith in the Divines was not what it was. In fact,
given the things that had happened to her, and that had been
allowed to happen to everyone in the Seat, she wondered whether
she’d ever had any at all. The voice inside remained silent, but she
knew it was right more often than not.
As she paused, thinking about her beliefs and considering
what to say, she recalled recent times when that pain and
loneliness had been taken away from her. And as she did, a voice
rang clearly in her ears, a voice full of a depth of emotion that was
uncommon in a place like the Seat, and Catelyn knew what she
would do. She got the girls to their feet again.
“Come on, we’re going.”

Silena was started awake by the first knock on her door,
her heart racing at the possibilities as she reached for the heavy
plank of wood she kept by her bedside. When the second knock
came from downstairs, she grabbed it along with a shawl she had
laid at the foot of the bed to keep her feet warm, and padded from
her room down the stairs and to the front door. At the base of the
stairs, she poked at the fire in the hearth to stoke the flames, and a
burst of warmth and light rewarded her efforts.

A third banging on the door, this time more insistent, sent
Silena into a rage. Even if it were the Emperor himself calling at
this prayer, she would give him a piece of her mind.

She looked to the sofa in the middle of the room, scanning
the lumpy pile of blankets. Somewhere under there her bodyguard
Erich snored, still passed out from their prior night drinking wine
together, oblivious to the disturbance at the door just paces away.

“Useless lump you are,” she muttered affectionately under
her breath as she shuffled over to the door.
Silena presumed that if it was indeed the Empire calling,
they wouldn’t have knocked, nor would one bodyguard do much to
dissuade them from whatever they had planned. She therefore
could only conclude that it must be a disgruntled customer, which
she knew just how to handle, thank you very much. And if not,
well, she hoped Erich was simply being lazy and pretending to be
asleep. She had to admit, she didn’t think much of him as a
bodyguard. She mostly liked him for his company. And his rear
end.
When she got to the door, she slid the small porthole near
the top of the door open, to see who had come to call at this prayer
of night, and at first she saw no one and began to mutter angrily
about kids playing pranks. Then a small hand appeared, and a
voice croaked “Down here!”
Silena slid the porthole shut and stood dumbfounded for a
moment.
“What in Aldus’ name is this?” she whispered to herself.
She considered simply returning to bed.
This has to be a bad dream, that’s all,
she thought.
But her curiosity was now winning her over, and she
paused. Then, she turned around and, kicking herself for giving in,
proceeded to unlatch the door, pulling the heavy oak in on its
hinges. The sight that greeted her as she opened the door nearly
sent her reeling.
Two small, skinny girls stood on her stoop, barely clothed
and shivering, with cold or fright or both, clutching each other and
sobbing uncontrollably.
Silena’s heart, which these days she only ever felt during
episodes of anxiety and stress, leapt up into her throat and she
dropped to her knees, without thinking, and hugged the girls to
her, whispering “oh, you poor dears” over and over again.
After a few whispers, and with tears brimming in her own
eyes, Silena looked the girls up and down, asking them how they’d
got here and what they were doing, but they seemed unresponsive.
That’s when Silena saw, on the ground next to the girls, a single,
petite footprint made with blood, the five toes plainly visible.
She knew then who the girls had come with and Silena
pulled the girls inside quickly, looking left and right, fearing that
someone might be watching.
“Now the first thing we need to do is to find you some
warm clothes,” Silena said as she bolted the door shut, then she
yelled for Erich to wake up.

Catelyn dropped to her knees as soon as she returned to
her roost, exhausted, hurt, and anguished. Despite the sheer
number of cuts, scrapes and burns she had sustained, what caused
her the most pain wasn’t any of her injuries. It was her heart,
which ached acutely at having to leave the girls, that cut the
deepest. She had called many of her beliefs into question recently,
but she believed with everything that she was that Silena would
treat them as though they were her own children. She knew this,
because that was how Silena had treated her. She may have been
losing her faith in the Divines, but she still had faith in the
goodness of the woman she had befriended.

No, not faith,
she realized.
Trust.
Despite this realization, she still felt an intense heartache
at what she had been forced to do, and what she would be forced to
do now. She felt like crying, like she should just put her head into
her hands and let the feelings take her, and damn the
consequences, but she stopped herself. She knew it would serve no
purpose yet, so instead she resolved to set her escape plan in
motion.
The very first sojourn after her parent’s murders, when
she had gone about transforming the attic and crawlspace of the
building she had taken over into a thieve’s roost best suited to the
life she was going to lead, she had also built in a contingency plan
just in case she came to the conclusion that she would need to flee
the Empire. She had learned from the incident which had killed
her parents and she had promised herself that she would never
again be caught without a viable and swift exit strategy should
things turn lethal. As much as it pained her to consider enacting
her plan, she felt that she had no choice.
Catelyn went over the mental checklist of things that she
would need to do to put that plan into action. Her first order of
business was to at least treat the worst of her wounds, lest she fall
prey to blood loss, infection or worse.
She knew that she had burns on her arms and legs, the
worst being the one on the palm of her hand; cuts all over her
body, mostly minor but a few that were deeper, including some on
the soles of her feet which she knew she would need to clean and
wrap before leaving the roost again; and bruises, such as the
massive, painful one on her shoulder. After leaving the girls with
Silena, Catelyn had tested her arm and realized that she had
thankfully avoided her worst fear: that the joint had been
dislocated. But it still burned with pain every time she moved her
arm.
Having taken stock of the injuries that she knew about,
she prepared herself for the pain she was about to experience in
cleaning and dressing the worst of them. She wished that she could
follow her usual routine for cleaning her injuries, but even now the
Imperial officer who had spotted her fleeing the Dane’s estate
could be marching a brigade up the street outside her home,
searching for her, so she had no time to do her usual thorough selfassessment.
She forced herself to her feet and gingerly climbed down to
her living chambers. She quickly went to the basins and washed
the worst of the cuts to her feet, the pain stinging her and causing
her to wince as she picked shards of glass and other materials from
her soles and palms. She cleansed all of her open wounds with a
stiff brush she kept near the basins, and the pain of reopening and
scrubbing the wounds was almost more than she could bear, but
she knew that she had to remove the dirt to prevent the filth
entering into her blood. There was already a chance that she had
been infected this way, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t try
everything she could to safeguard against it.
She knew that she would pick up a few more scars in the
coming cycles.
When she was done cleaning herself, she wound the clean
strips of cloth she always kept rolled near the basins around her
arms and legs, and even protected her feet as well, covering the
open wounds as best she could, while leaving her toes exposed so
that she could continue to use them to sense the ground.
Once her wounds were dressed, she hobbled around the
living space to recover the few possessions she wished to keep with
her, including the weapon. She stuffed as much as she was able
into her traveling bag; some dried food, clean clothing and other
linens, jars of clean water, a thin blanket and a few personal
necessities, and the weapon she strapped into the makeshift loop
sheath she had fashioned, which she then attached to her thigh.
She mentally checked off everything she needed or wanted
to take with her two more times and once she knew she had it all,
she climbed back up to the upper floor and exited through the hole
in the ceiling. She limped to the edge of her building, bent down
and gripped the end of a coil of rope she had placed there many
sojourns ago.
She held that rope for several whispers, feeling the weight
of it in her hands. It was just a rope, but it was also much more. It
was the end of her old life. She had survived here. She had
conquered her fears here. She had transformed herself here. And
now it was all going to the Void.
With a final heart-wrenching move, she tugged the rope
hard, and then scurried as quickly as she was able along the eaves
of the nearby buildings, heading south toward the Brunley
channel.
Behind her, she heard the eruption from her roost as it
burst into flames, but she did not turn her head back.