Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (28 page)

This time it was Duncan who was silent, and Catelyn
crossed her arms, unsure what to say next and debating how much
to let him know. Finally she settled on the answer and her reply
was borne out of the feeling of comfort and ease that Duncan
exuded.
“My name is Catelyn,” she said simply.
Catelyn pressed herself against the wall when she felt him
start walking back in her direction, and she could sense his right
arm raise, his hand extended. He stopped within a pace of where
she stood, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him.
“Catelyn, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I have my hand out.
My uncle told me it’s one of the old ways people used to greet each
other. If you wanted to, you know. To shake it.” Now there was a
sense of nervousness in his manner, but it was of a kind she hadn’t
experienced before. The kind way he spoke and the direct way he’d
tried to help her by telling her about the hand he had extended,
even though she hadn’t needed the help. Of course, he couldn’t
have known that.
She considered a moment, then reached out with her own
right hand, slowly extending it in front of her. He helped her out,
and met her hand with his own, though Catelyn wasn’t sure she
trusted him enough yet to tell him she didn’t need that kind of
help. His hand was warm to the touch, and although his palm was
soft, unlike hers, his grip was strong.
She could feel the rest of him through that hand, could feel
his pulse racing and his breathing, so closely timed to her own. She
could feel her own face flush, and Catelyn felt embarrassment
suddenly and withdrew her hand.
Duncan again radiated disappointment, but he quickly
covered over it.
“I like your hair,” he said bluntly.
Catelyn felt a moment of panic, and checked to see if her
head scarf was still in place. Duncan chuckled and told her “Don’t
worry, it’s just a strand hanging down.” He reached out his hand
again, and she stiffened.
He stopped then, and simply asked “May I?”
Catelyn had never expected such a question. In her world
up to this point, the men she had met would have never considered
something so...polite. That Duncan would ask permission, even for
something so inconsequential, was refreshing. Catelyn nodded.
She felt his hand and arm coming near to her face, and
time seemed to slow to a crawl as she took in this new experience.
This close to her, she could smell him, the real smell that she knew
was different about everyone, and it was not unpleasant. Unlike
most everyone else she had ever met in the Seat, especially other
men, Duncan did not smell awful and she wondered how he
managed such a feat.
She almost thought to ask him, but then realized how rude
that question might sound, and then he had tucked her hair up
into her scarf and took a step back. She found herself irrationally
wishing he had lingered, and immediately chided herself.
Fool, you know nothing about this man!
she thought
harshly.
“So, Catelyn,” Duncan said, her senses detecting the return
of his nervousness. “Do you mind if I ask you what you were doing
here? Why you were pounding on the Wall and screaming like
that?”
Catelyn did panic, now.
How can I tell him even a shred of the truth, without
revealing everything about me?
She opted to lie and only provide him with a vague answer,
but immediately felt a sense of shame and guilt at the offense,
necessary as it was.
“I was just angry, that’s all. I’m hungry, I just arrived from
the Seat and I’m tired from the journey.”
Duncan listened, and she could smell his distrust at the lie.
He didn’t fully believe her, clearly, but he sighed and chose not to
say anything, playing along.
“Yeah, I guess I can see that. It’s not an easy trip…”
Duncan let the rest of this sentence die on his lips, and
Catelyn felt her heart pounding in awkward silence.
She felt like she needed to escape this situation, before she
got pulled in any further than was comfortable.
“Duncan, thank you for your concern. Really. But I’ve got
to get back to where I’m...staying before it gets dark.”
Duncan sighed. More disappointment. This time, Catelyn
felt badly that she was forced to be the source of that feeling in
him.
“I understand. I...it was nice meeting you, Catelyn.”
Catelyn could hear so much more unspoken in that simple pause,
and something inside of her wanted to badly to fill it. But she knew
it would never be possible.
“Thank you,” was all she said, and then she heard him
back away, and walk slowly towards the alleys and buildings. And
then he was gone, and she was alone, and although being alone
was not a new feeling for her, she felt that absence and emptiness
within her in a way that she had never felt before.

Catelyn traversed up the Brunley Channel throughout the
night, all of her possessions slung into the pack on her back, the
exotic curved weapon in the center of it all, securely and safely
stored in its slim case. She had returned from scouting the
southern Wall and her encounter with Duncan by evening, and
with a small sense of heartache, she packed all of her belongings
and began the journey north towards the Seat. Despite the
majority of her experiences in Brunley turning out horribly,
Catelyn found herself looking back to the south as she stood on the
threshold of the city and the channel which led back to the Seat.

She wondered about Duncan, still marveling at his
kindness and his warmth, and his clean smell. And she thought
about his life there, alone. How had he managed to survive all this
time? How had he held onto his kindness, clearly demonstrated to
her with his words, his actions, and the subtle qualities she sensed
about him through her bubble.

Catelyn wished that her circumstances had been different,
and that she had been able to trust Duncan, had been able to get to
know him better. For the first time in her life, Catelyn found
herself fantasizing about being closer to another person in the way
that adults did; about being closer to Duncan. Feeling his warm
skin with her hands, and in turn feeling his strong hands on her
body. She felt her body respond to those thoughts, but she fought
them away, unwilling to allow them to distract her from what she
needed to do and where she needed to place her focus.

And so she was racing towards the Seat, leaping over
chimneys and balancing her feet along pipes and beams, looking
ahead instead of behind. She was hoping to get back to the Seat
before the sun rose, so that she could find a place to hide out and
sleep the day away before she headed out to Belkyn on the
following day.

She had to leave the Empire. Her experiences in Brunley
had only reinforced the direness of her situation, and she knew
that Duncan and whatever she thought of him could only ever be a
fantasy. And a distracting fantasy at that.

Despite telling herself this, her heart ached the further she
got from Brunley, and she fought off the urge to turn around, even
if only just to hear his voice once more.

Despite everything that had happened there, all the horror
and the hopelessness, leaving Brunley was harder than she could
have ever imagined.

Ortis stood concealed in the shadow of an abandoned
building, pacing and biting the skin from his fingertips. Whenever
his nerves got the better of him, which usually only occurred in the
middle of that quiet tension right before a big battle, he would
begin picking at the skin on his fingers, until he had peeled off
enough to take small chunks of his own flesh to chew while he
worked on solving his problem. Something about the metallic tang
of blood and the chewing of flesh helped him to focus and soothe
his frayed nerves.

The source of his tension this time wasn’t combat. It was
simply that, for the first time in his adult life, Ortis had no clear
idea of what in the Void he was doing. He wasn’t even sure who he
was anymore. He didn’t know why, but during the last span, from
the moment he had first glimpsed the mysterious thief with the red
hair and blindfold, his entire world had come apart at the seams.

That experience, for reasons he could not understand, had
jarred something inside of him, and he felt as though he were
simultaneously stinking drunk and completely sober. Drunk
because he felt as though the mere sight of that frail girl in the
alley had placed him under some sort of spell and his own mind
was not his own. And sober because whatever it was about her that
had so affected him, he knew clearly that she was important to him
in a way that he had never experienced before.

He knew only one thing clearly; he needed to find the girl.
To help her. He honestly had no idea why he felt this way, and
frustratingly, how he was going to accomplish this. Only that he
must.

Nothing in his life had ever made more sense than this
realization.
He fully acknowledged that it was quite likely that he had
finally gone insane.
Do insane men know they’re insane?
he wondered.
Insanity would explain much, but something inside of him
told him that this was not true. It stared him squarely in the face.
Ortis had never believed in the Divines, had never thought much of
things like fate, destiny or a higher purpose. Oh, he had played at
such games for much of his life, particularly to placate Uriel, who
was a strong believer in those things. But he had done so explicitly
so that he could share in the grand visions of his former lover.
In his heart, Ortis had never seen any kind of grand
purpose or design.
It is simply the world, and I took from it what I wished.
He had always been content to let Uriel dictate their
purpose as well, charting their course according to his belief in his
own destiny. But now, faced with this new experience, Ortis was
beginning to question those views.
He could feel certainty about this new purpose of his deep
inside, far down in his bones.
After the fire had guttered out the night of the Purge, he
had abandoned his men without a word, going off to think by
himself. He had wandered the streets of the Seat, unheeding of the
looks from the citizens of the Seat that were thrown his way. He
knew those looks well.
Fear. Despair. Horror. Pain. Disgust. Hate.
The hate was the most palpable of all. Abject loathing,
buried deeply, but Ortis saw it. Uriel only ever saw the fear. Likely
because it aroused and intoxicated him, blinding him from seeing
beyond it. But Ortis knew how the citizens of the Seat truly felt, full
of hatred so deep down that they might not even know it was
there.
The Emperor fed upon fear, but that was an emotion that
Ortis no longer experienced. In fact, as he wandered the streets, a
sudden wash of another emotion flowed into him and he stumbled.
He fell to his knees in the grime and the dirt, weeping and crying
out as passers by ran into their homes and shut up their doors and
windows, trying to block out this display from a man who most
knew on sight, but one who people only saw right before their own
painful and imminent deaths.
And just as suddenly as the tears and the wailing had
overtaken him, a wave of laughter followed close behind. He
laughed out loud, and then laughed even more when he stopped to
consider what the people in the homes nearby must be seeing.
What must they be thinking, as they peered out from behind their
curtains and the cracks of doors.
Here, kneeling in the street, was the Emperor’s most
trusted officer. The man with a dozen names, earned in the most
violent of ways throughout the sojourns. The Butcher. The Brutal
One. The Purger.
The Living Death, kneeling in the muck, weeping and
laughing like a small child.
Ortis was sure that word of this episode would reach Uriel
before the span was over, but he no longer cared.
He couldn’t begin to understand why exactly he found
himself alone in the street, uncontrollably alternating between
weeping and laughing like a madman, but he was beginning to
understand what to call it: Guilt.
Shame.
In that moment, when he finally named the source of his
distemper, he acutely felt the pain of every life he had ever taken.
Every life he had ruined. Every life he had devastated. Decades of
crimes flooded into him in that instant, each one bubbling up from
somewhere in his mind, and he relived them all. Their pain. Their
anguish. Their fear. It washed over him like a flood, and it was
unbearable.
Ortis had taken his short blade from its sheath then,
baring the blade and laying it against his throat. He felt it bite into
his skin, and the warmth of his blood beginning to slide over his
fingers and down the front of his hardened leather doublet.
He wished to die. He wished to experience the most
painful end he could possibly imagine, and he sought it out. He
took the blade from his throat and laid it instead against his
abdomen. A single thrust would empty his innards upon the dirtcovered street, and he would bleed out in agony, taking several
horrible prayers to die.
But he held his hand, and the blade shook as some inner
war raged on inside him.
Something inside stopped him. He felt a calling. An urge
to do something more with his life before he met his end. It was
something to do with the girl. And it was strong. Stronger even
than the pull he’d felt from the Emperor those many sojourns ago.
It wasn’t redemption that he sought. As he kneeled with
his sword pressed into his belly, he knew that he deserved to die a
thousand times for what he had done in his life. But something in
him refused to consider his own death, not until after he had done
this thing.
He still didn’t know what that was, but he knew it was
critical, and that was when he had begun to believe.
And with that certainty, his pain disappeared and he was
able to stand and gather his wits about him. The first thing he had
done was to put some distance between himself and the Emperor.
Uriel would execute him without hesitation for his betrayal. But
Ortis had earned enough loyalty and favors over the sojourns that
it would be some time until Uriel realized that he was missing, and
before the rest of the Empire would be alerted to his treason. Still,
he would need to move fast.
He’d used his connections to go underground, and
disappeared into the slums of the Seat, exploiting his knowledge of
Imperial strengths and tactics to establish a place to live and
gather the resources he would need until he could track down the
girl. In truth, he had another, more permanent bolt hole to go to
ground in if he ever needed it, but he wanted to save that until he
ran out of options. He established a new look for himself,
acquiring a set of ragged clothing and a hooded cloak, and taking
inspiration from the girl, he bought a scarf to wrap around his
nose and mouth. Not even the Emperor would recognize him,
enough they were standing close enough to kiss.
But as Ortis settled into his new situation, he grew
increasingly frustrated and impatient, and spent many of the
following days and nights either walking the streets, looking for
any trace of the girl, or pacing back and forth in the abandoned
building where he slept, trying to remember the details of that
night for any clue as to her location.
It was a chance encounter that sparked him to think about
things differently, and that finally led him to following a solid lead.
He had been stalking through the streets in his disguise early in
the morning, thinking about the girl’s direction as she’d moved
away from the Dane’s estate, trying to extrapolate where she might
have gone, when suddenly he felt a light brushing against his leg,
and caught sight of a young boy scampering away down an alley
without looking back. Ortis, wary, felt at his belt and confirmed
what he had suspected: his coin purse was gone.
Ortis took off after the boy, his long legs carrying him into
the alley quickly and strongly, gaining on the boy quicker than the
boy had anticipated. When the boy heard something behind him,
he turned and gaped when he saw Ortis barreling down on him.
The boy is probably used to getting away with this,
he
thought.
The boy stumbled, and Ortis caught up to him before they
reached the end of the alley. Not that it would have mattered, as
the alley seemed to be a dead end, and the only exit from the far
side was blocked with a massive pile of refuse piled two paces high.
Ortis stood over the boy, who simply cowered and offered
the purse to him in surrender. He had enough street smarts to
know when he was beaten, and was likely trying to save himself
from the literal interpretation of that outcome. Ortis, at one time,
would have killed this boy for his insolence. For daring to steal
from the Empire itself.
But that Ortis was dead. He was someone else now. He
was something else. And whoever he was now, he simply reached
out and took the purse from the boy. As he turned on his heel to
return to the street, a thought occurred to him.
“Boy, have you ever seen a blind girl in this area?”
The boy remained silent.
“Well, boy? Are you mute? Deaf?”
“I c’n talk,” the boy said gruffly, looking up at Ortis with
his grubby face and bloodshot yellow eyes.
“So?” Ortis grumbled.
“No blind girls. I can get you young girls though. They’s as
won’t fight back much.”
Ortis felt a spike of hatred in his guts at the implication.
And then once more, the flood of shame erupted inside and he
tasted his own bile as he recalled the faces of every child he had
ever despoiled. He fought to keep the pain and disgust from his
face, and clarified his request for the boy.
“ I don’t mean that. She wouldn’t be like that. She was a
thief, like you. Slight build, barefoot and...red hair.” Ortis decided
to risk as much detail as he was able, as he didn’t think this child
had any connections to the Empire, or to anyone of consequence
really.
“Oh, her? Tha’ one what got them Dane’s kilt?”
Ortis grunted in surprise. Apparently word had spread of
the girl’s involvement in those events, at least in the streets. In
Ortis’ search, he had learned that the Empire itself still had no idea
of the girl’s role in what had transpired, and he was relieved by
that fact. But if the urchins in the streets knew, he supposed it was
only a matter of time until word of her reached Uriel.
“She’s dead,” the boy said simply.
Ortis’ heart squeezed tightly at the words and their
finality, and his hands trembled.
“How do you know this?” Ortis roared, reaching out and
grabbing the boy’s tiny wrists, feeling his new found purpose
slipping away, like sand between his fingers.
“Ow, hey! Le’ go!”
Ortis loosened his grip somewhat, but he didn’t let the boy
go. Not until he had his answer.
“Tha’s jus’ what ev’ryun says. She n’ver been seen since.
Course, not like she was none too visible ‘fore.”
Ortis processed this, and felt some slight relief that this
was merely a rumor, which Ortis well knew could very well be far,
far from the truth.
“What else do they say about it, boy?”
“Jus’ tha’ she did the Seat a favor, riddin’ it o’ them damn
Danes. Tho’ some curse her tha’ she did’n save them two other
girls.”
This caused Ortis to release his grip and take a step back,
and the boy wasted no time, and bolted for the back of the alley.
Surprisingly, what had appeared to have been a dead end turned
out not to have been, as the boy shifted aside some of the filth,
revealing a hole through to the other side, and disappeared as fast
as anything Ortis had ever seen. If Ortis hadn’t had darker
thoughts to peruse in his mind, he might have admired the boy’s
ingenuity and courage. He didn’t attempt to pursue the child, but
was lost in his own thoughts.
The other two girls. Ortis thought back to that night. He
hadn’t given a single moment of thought to the two girls that the
thief had rescued that night. He clearly saw them in his mind’s eye,
scared and shivering and bleeding from scrapes, but otherwise
healthy and whole.
Why does the boy, or anyone for that matter, think
they’re dead?
Ortis went over what the boy had just said again, and he
could only come to a single conclusion. He knew from witnessing it
with his own eyes that the thief had gotten the girls out alive, but
the rumor in the streets was that they’d been killed. That was
significant. Ortis could only assume that the thief had either taken
them in herself, or had taken them to someone to be hidden.
Whichever turned out to be the truth, Ortis now had a lead to
follow.
Finding the two girls would lead him to his thief. He
believed this, because he had to.