Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (9 page)

She reached out with nimble fingers and found the
window latch, exactly where her bubble had revealed it to be,
deftly flipping it open and quietly moving it aside. She sniffed the
air around the latch softly, but smelled nothing out of the ordinary.
She smelled and felt no rust on the hinges, but no oil either. She
was being more cautious that usual, but she had only observed the
mark for two nights, and had not had the chance to get close
enough to know if the window would squeal when she opened it,
giving her away. But she was prepared for the possibility
nonetheless, and reached into the pocket of her pants.

She pulled out a small jar, removed the stopper with her
teeth and wedged the jar in the space between the latch handle and
the glass. She took a small dollop of grease from inside and
smeared it on her fingers, applying it first to the latch and then for
good measure around the edges of the hinges. She wiped her
fingers, replaced the stopper in the jar and slid it back into her
pants. She splayed her right palm against the pockmarked glass,
and pushed lightly.

The resistance to her force was slight, and then gave in
with a puff of air. She winced at the noise, but then relaxed when
no alarm was raised inside. The hardest thing for Catelyn when it
came to being stealthy was not knowing how loud her actions were
to normal ears. Because of her finely honed sense of hearing,
things that would alert her were things most people could only
barely hear.

With her right arm, she eased the window open all the
way, her left arm and legs beginning to quiver with the strain of
keeping herself hanging in place on the sheer wall. Her feet were
sliding down ever so slightly as well, her toes straining with the
effort of keeping her in one spot as she worked on the window. Her
body was giving in to fatigue, and she would fall to a painful and
embarrassing death if she didn’t get inside fast.

She applied all the pressure she could to the window, and
it cantilevered open soundlessly. She resisted the urge to sigh
audibly in relief, and she held tightly to the window frame with
both arms as she slipped her legs slowly, first one and then the
other, from the wall to the lip of the open window frame.

It took all of her strength and flexibility, but finally she
dropped quietly into the house and tightened her bubble to just a
few paces around her. Nothing stood out but the continuous deep
breathing and light snoring of the master of the house, Dane
Eyrris.

Like all of her break-ins, she had tried to plan this
incursion with plenty of time to explore if she wished, something
that she usually took full advantage of, but tonight after the delay
caused by what she had perceived of the party earlier, and the
thought of what was still left here from that scene, she wished to
simply get her prize and be gone. Given all she had experienced so
far, it seemed like the only course open to her. She steeled herself
for what was about to happen, expanded her bubble to take in the
entire room and sniffed again, preparing for the worst.

To her surprise, the smells from before were now very
faint, almost like a distant memory. Perhaps the final two persons
that had left Dane Eyrris to sleep it off had cleaned up the mess
before departing.

With one ear tuned to the back rooms, and the other to the
rhythmic breathing of Dane Eyrris as he slumbered, Catelyn went
to work mapping the room. Although she had already scouted the
place several times over the past two nights, it had all been from
the same rooftop across from the building where she had observed
earlier that night, and if there was one lesson that she had learned
over the sojourns, it was that it was always a good idea to map a
room from inside.

So she focused her bubble exactly to a six-pace sphere
around her, and gradually expanded it pace by pace in a grid like
pattern until she had a clear image of the room in her mind’s eye,
along with everyone and everything in it. The exception to her
thorough cataloging of the room was the dais where the previous
actions of the party goers had been focused earlier. That, she
deliberately bypassed, for the memory of the sounds she had
heard, and the jumble of smells she could detect there, was enough
to convince her that some things she was better off not knowing
the details of.

She had to admit that she had never experienced anything
quite like it before, and part of her itched to approach the area and
investigate fully. Her curiosity was piqued, but not enough to
distract her from what had drawn her here to begin with. Her goal
lay before her, and she moved breathlessly toward it.

Catelyn, whisper soft, approached the wall where she had
perceived Dane Eyrris to be storing the object she sought. The
relic, she knew, was hidden behind a sliding panel or false section
of that wall. In the past two nights since he’d placed it there after
showing it to the prior, she had heard Eyrris stand before that wall
several times, sometimes for almost half of a prayer, but he never
again opened it.

And so the only stumbling block remaining between her
and her prize was understanding how to access the hidden safe
behind the false section of the wall. Dane Eyrris had seemingly
done nothing, and yet he had been able to slide the section away
with ease and then lock it shut, without any obvious motion of
throwing a switch. Under different circumstances, and in a place
that hadn’t earlier been the scene of some horrific crime and
preventing her from fleeing this horrible place, she might stop to
admire such a simple but elegant safe.

She stopped when she reached the spot where she had
heard Dane Eyrris stand each time he had checked on the safe, and
raised both arms, feeling the wall with her hands, testing for edges.

She ran her fingers up and down the wall in a systematic
fashion, mapping the textures, focusing all of her awareness into
the tips of her fingers. She read the temperature, the swelling
bumps and valleys of the plaster, counted the layers of finely
applied paint. Now that she was inside the man’s apartment, she
realized by feeling the quality of the materials and the construction
just how wealthy and powerful the Dane must be. Catelyn had
never felt such a clean and elegant wall before. Three passes over
the wall’s lightly textured surface revealed nothing.

Finally, in the middle of a fourth pass across, she felt the
almost imperceptible edges of the panel embedded in the wall. The
edges were flush to the wall in a way that she wouldn’t have
thought possible, and again she felt a sense of amazement at the
difference between this world and the one she had grown up in.
Once her fingertips found the single edge, she traced it along until
she came to a corner, then followed the other edge, and wrapping
it together, discovering a panel about a half pace across.

This wall safe was truly was a masterpiece of design, and
must have cost Dane Eyrris a small fortune to have built and
installed. She would be willing to wager that the gap was invisible
to the eye, which for the second time tonight made her grateful
that she didn’t need to rely on her vision.

She ran her fingers around the boundary of the panel
more than once, but found no obvious latch or notch, or any other
indication of how it opened. Which, while expected, was still no
less disappointing. She thought back to the one time she had
perceived Eyrris opening the wall.

She was positive that his hands had been at his sides until
after it was opened, and only after the panel slid open did he raise
his arms to take out the case containing the relic. To her senses, it
appeared that he had simply gazed at the wall until it opened, then
stood in silence while holding the relic, only to place it back in the
alcove and step away. As he did, the false wall slid back into place
and clicked as it locked shut.

She squatted onto her haunches, running her fingers down
towards the floor as she did so. She detected no other seams, and
no crevices even after repeated sweeps with her fingers. She was
impressed by how smooth the wall was, but that too came as no
surprise. She knew Dane Eyrris was one of the wealthiest people in
the Seat, and he could afford niceties like windows with latches,
doors with locks and smooth, painted walls.

She took the focus away from her fingertips and tilted her
head at varying angles, listening and smelling, but detected
nothing with her nose or ears of how the mechanism might work.
While still squatting she shifted her focus back to her fingertips
and ran them along the ground by her feet. The floor was cool to
the touch, made of polished wood.

They were yet another example of Dane Eyrris’ position.
Catelyn had grown up with wood floors in her home, and she
thought that she knew what wood floors felt like. But this was in a
different category altogether. Catelyn stifled the pleasure she felt at
the subtle warp and weft of the exquisite wood under her fingers
and toes. This was not the time to be distracted, but she had to
admit that the texture of the floor was what she could only refer to
as delicious.

She redistributed her weight to stand up and as she did so,
the sensations she had been experiencing as she lingered over the
quality of the floor allowed her to stumble onto the secret. As she
shifted her weight to go from crouching to standing, she felt one
area beneath her soles depress by the barest amount, as though it
were just a hair thinner than the surrounding areas. She smiled
when she realized the answer.

A pressure plate.
She first tested the floor with one foot, then with the other.
Nothing seemed dangerous about it, and it was truly unremarkable
other than the fact that now that she was aware of it, the
depression was now very evident to her sense of touch. She
prepared herself to bolt if it was somehow attached to an alarm
bell or some other security precaution, and then stepped down
onto the square with both feet, resting her full weight on it, but it
did not open the wall compartment.
She started to wonder what the plate would be keyed to.
And then she remembered the odd ritual that the Dane had
undergone when he had returned the object to the safe. He had
seemingly removed at least part of his clothing, and muttered:
“I’ve been enjoying myself too much.”
Could it be as simple as the panel being keyed to Dane
Eyrris’ weight
? Catelyn smiled at the solution right under her feet,
and she hearkened back to another of the lessons that she had
learned as a young girl.
One of the books that Catelyn had read continually as a
child, as it was one of the earliest books her father had acquired at
the black market, was a book about science, a field of study from
ancient times which no one truly understood any longer. It was
elementary level science, according to the book, but it began with a
description of a process from the Before which they called the
“scientific method”. Catelyn ran over the steps in her mind like a
mental checklist.
You begin with an observation.
She had just observed that the wall panel appeared to have
no obvious operating mechanism, but there was clearly some kind
of pressure plate embedded in the floor.
Then you formulate a hypothesis.
Right now, her working hypothesis was that the pressure
plate was keyed to Dane Eyrris’ weight.
Next, you make a prediction.
Her prediction was that if she could somehow get enough
weight on the pressure plate to simulate Dane Eyrris standing on
it, it would open the panel on the wall, and the prize would be hers.
Then, you run an experiment to test that hypothesis.
As part of her observations of Dane Eyrris, in preparation
for this job, Catelyn had followed him for the better part of the past
two days. It was important to learn his routine, listen to his voice,
get a sense of his manner, and memorize his habits. By the end of
her scouting, she knew many of the details of his life and in a way
that only she could, such as the distinct sound of his heart’s
rhythm, the unique smell of his particular body odor, and the
precise thump of his footfalls. It was this last piece of information
which she could use to calculate his weight to within a stone or
two.
Unfortunately, based on Dane Eyrris’ frustration the other
day, it appeared as though the mechanism required a precise
weight. This was the first time that Catelyn could see a flaw in the
design of this security mechanism, because she knew from
listening to the footfalls of the targets she had shadowed over the
sojourns that a person’s weight fluctuated up and down from day
to day, especially during times when food was scarce in the Seat, as
was an all-too-common occurrence. Even for a man like Dane
Eyrris, whose wealth allowed him to eat on a regular basis, she
knew that it was very likely that there would be times where he
would overindulge, which is why he had had to remove some of his
clothing in order to open the panel the other night. And therein lay
Catelyn’s immediate problem.
In order for Catelyn to come close to the precise weight of
Dane Eyrris, who was of average height but well-muscled, Catelyn
would need to add another twenty stone or so to her own weight.
She was slender even when she had been moderately well fed as a
child, thanks to her parents, but life on the streets, with food
coming to her in scarce supply much of the time, had done little to
add to her health, and she was nowhere near the weight of an
average girl her age and height, much less that of a grown man.
Where am I going to get twenty stone in here?
she
thought.
She paused to consider the craziest idea first, that of
simply dragging an unconscious Dane Eyrris over to the pressure
plate.
She turned her bubble towards where Dane Eyrris slept,
his blubbering breathing sounding like a saw ripping through a
wooden post. As soon as she considered this notion however, she
discarded it.
Even if he didn’t wake up from the attempt, I couldn’t
move him all by myself.
Catelyn expanded her bubble, taking in all the information
she could from the room around her, desperately searching for
something that she might use to add to her own weight.
Unfortunately for her, Dane Eyrris was a remarkably
spartan individual. Apart from a few essential pieces of furniture,
what little of Eyrris’ belongings were present would not get her
even close to the correct weight. And she couldn’t afford the time it
would take to rearrange the room to find something she could use
to open the safe anyway.
She briefly considered simply giving up. She didn’t even
know what it was that Dane Eyrris had possession of. For all she
knew it was simply a book, not unlike the ones she had found and
kept hidden over the sojourns. And while she had a clear love for
books and learning new things, she was no longer in a position to
appreciate them for what they were. Without her eyesight, books
were of no use to her.
Still, she had come too far and worked through some of
her most potent fears to get inside. It would be foolish of her to
quit now, so close to her goal.
From the other room, Dane Eyrris suddenly stopped
snoring, and Catelyn froze, her heart pounding, listening for the
telltale footfalls she expected to hear any second. But they never
came, and a few breaths later, Eyrris gasped noisily and then
resumed snoring, even louder than before. Catelyn slowly let out
the breath she herself was holding, and waited a few breaths while
her heart stopped hammering.
Catelyn expanded her bubble and tried once more to
identify something that she could use to add the additional weight
she would need to open the safe. And that’s when she realized that
there was, in fact, one part of the room she had deliberately
avoided in her search of the area. One part of the room where she
had heard sounds of breathless terror just prayers ago. She felt her
lower legs twitch, as though they were about to carry her away out
the window and into the night against her will, or maybe for it.
She decided that turning from the reality of what lay in
that part of the room wouldn’t make it any better; wouldn’t make it
go away. She had tried to hide from the pain and the terror before,
when she had been cold and alone and hungry, and the truth
always found her.
She used a trick she had learned a few sojourns prior,
where she let her bubble degrade to what she imagined a normal
person might smell or hear, and stepped lightly toward the area. A
pace away from her goal, her right foot trod in something cold,
wet, and slimy.
Although she had dampened her sense of smell enough so
that the stench wouldn't overwhelm her, there was no question
that she was standing in a pool of cool, sticky blood congealing on
the floor, and sliding up between her toes. She brought her hands
to her mouth and swallowed down the urge to vomit, willing
herself not to picture the scene in her mind.
She found a clean patch of wood nearby and wiped her
foot until it felt dry, then tightened her bubble to just under a pace,
and proceeded forward slowly, arms outstretched. Her fingers
brushed it first. She had already known what to expect, but still,
feeling the lifeless cold flesh was still almost more than she could
bear. Cold, but with the barest hint of warmth to it, and Catelyn’s
worst fears were realized, and confirmed what she had heard as
she had listened from across the street.
The horrible truth of it threatened to bring her to her
knees, and she lost all of her senses. Her hand would not move
from the one spot where she had first touched the body, and all she
could tell from that contact was that whoever this was, they had
only been robbed of their life less than two prayers ago. While she
had been waiting.
A person had been murdered.
She clapped her free hand over her mouth to stifle a
scream which nearly escaped her mouth, and felt her world come
tumbling in on her.
You could have stopped this.
The voice, normally so small, and normally only chiming
in when it was centered around the doubts surrounding her
beliefs, roared to life inside of her.
Why didn't you stop this?
Catelyn had experienced her share of horrors over the
sojourns, of course. She had even come to believe herself numbed
to the worst that the Empire had to offer. But standing here, with
one hand on a person who was now dead, and who she might have
been able to help…
“Why?” she whispered in a voice on the verge of breaking,
forgetting herself by uttering the word and running the risk of
being detected.
This blood is on your hands.
Catelyn couldn’t move, stung by the voice's self accusation.
The thought of it was like a nightmare. The reality of this
victim, a person just like her up until a few prayers ago, who was
now dead because of the horror of the world she lived in and at
least in part, because of her inaction.
Your inaction, and the actions of this man, and all those
like him. And all made possible by the Empire,
the voice insisted.
She had no idea what she could have done, but what made
her stop, what threatened to pull her down into an abyss of despair
was the realization that she hadn’t even tried. She hadn’t even
given a thought to this person’s life, or what it meant at the time.
She'd literally hidden from it.
She had been blind for many sojourns, but this was the
first time she realized how horrible it was to not see what was right
in front of her.
What are you going to do about it?
the voice echoed
again, only this time when it came up from inside her, it was laced
with bitterness and regret, and a white-hot anger began to rise
with it and that fire set her feet upon a path.