Bounty (36 page)

“Is…is there no way to escape her control, once she has your blood?” he dared, deciding he had to know whether he wanted to or not.

Releasing a transitional grunt, Damious unsettled himself from the stance of their chat and hoisted Alice over a shoulder. “Does she have your blood aside from where it graces a contract with your signature?” he wanted to know, preparing to leave.

Godren shook his head.

“Then, my friend,” Damious said, clapping him on the shoulder with his free hand, “your blood will be of no use to her after your term is up. Your signature will turn to ash and disappear off the page.”

Relief coursed through Godren like a purge, but only until Damious finished;

“But I wouldn’t count on her not having any more of your blood. Do you really mean to tell me that you haven’t bled while in her service?”

30:
Pieces of the Wind

G
odren chilled as Damious began making his departure. What a terrible thing to realize; he had done nothing
but
bleed since dedicating himself to Mastodon’s causes. He had bled when attacked by Alice, he had bled from the wolf’s attack, he had bled when he met Damious, he had bled rescuing Catris…

He couldn’t think of it. That was too much blood to acknowledge. Deciding to cling to the hope Damious had offered with is first assurance, Godren pushed the bleak bridges of despair to places he didn’t have to cross them.

“Where are you taking her?” he called up as Damious faded into the shadows.

Damious turned. “Like I said, I want to collect them and bring them all in at once.”

“Do you have others?” Godren pressed for information, trying to get as much out of the agreeable assassin as he could.

“Devlin and Osbourne and Graver,” he replied obligingly.

“And – any other news?”

“I hear Kingston took out Rogue somewhere in the city, but was delayed on delivering and collecting because he acquired a nasty grievance in the process. You should be expecting him, though.” Nodding cordially to disengage from further conversation, the assassin redirected himself and took his leave for good.

Godren stood in his wake, his feelings a mixed batch of conflicting responses to all that had just transpired. He’d teamed up with Mastodon’s most significant threat, caught Alice, had an array of questions answered, uncovered a treacherous plot that saw him even more determined to escape the impossible,
lost
Alice, and was left with new, contrasting fresh despair, and had absolutely nothing to show for the trauma.

Blinking, Godren shook the feeling of displacement and headed home for the night. There was no sense standing there like he didn’t know where to go from there when, quite obviously, there was nowhere at all to go.

*

He was only halfway back to the Underworld when a keen scrap of parchment fluttered down the alley and battered against his boot in a stray breeze Godren bent and retrieved it without much ado, only mildly curious, and turned it over to see if there was anything on the other side.

Ren:

Come to the chapel in

Alabaster Square.

Tomorrow, midday.

In the silence, as the breeze passed and died, Godren went utterly still. He stared at the note, at the familiar handwriting, at the blood it was written in.

No. Something was playing tricks on his eyes. There was no way for this to come to him, not from her. Not like this.

Untrustingly, Godren cast his eyes about the alley, but there was nothing except him and the darkness, and the scent of an uncanny breeze saturated into the stone around him. He reread the note, tying more characteristics to her the second time.

What…
he wondered incredulously, but that’s as far as he got.

Ren, come to the chapel…

He shook his head, thinking maybe he had finally lost it. What he held in his hand was something uncannily greater than coincidence, yet surely it couldn’t happen at all? Who could will such a thing?

He was certainly not going to come up with the answers himself. All he would achieve would be letting his imagination run wild and ruling out all of the solutions that proved creative enough for consideration. One did not consider the impossible.

But perhaps one should,
he decided on second thought.

Folding the note with decided wariness, he tucked it in a pocket. Out of sight was not out of mind, though. It felt heavy –
radiant
– and he could not even begin to focus on anything else. It was entirely too ripe with the worst kind of intrigue, haunting him.

A church,
he thought.
How does she except me to penetrate a church?
He couldn’t enter a holy place with the face he had.
She probably figures it can’t be harder than the palace.
But the church would not be nearly as vast, and it would be dangerously free of distraction, quiet and far too easy to disturb.

There was no way.
If only…
he thought,
If only I could attain invisibility.

He would not have even bothered with such an idea if he had not just allowed the notion of considering the impossible. The slave and their collars were fresh on his mind anyway, and he could not ignore what suddenly seemed like a perfect solution. Impossible it may have been, but if it was perfect, well…he had to give it a chance, didn’t he?

Suddenly he reconsidered the stillness, the emptiness, and the silence. Evantralis had appeared swiftly when needed the last time, as if she had been shadowing him. If Mastodon did have her assigned…

“Evantralis,” he summoned, feeling half foolish and half superior with special knowledge.

At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, an apparition materialized. The combination of dark skin and transparency that became her was only slightly more visible than not showing herself at all, but he did see her. Her eyes flashed in the dark, trained on him unblinking, as she waited.

Godren swallowed, suddenly humbled by the awareness of things that went on unseen around him. The spectrum he had known and spent so long adapting to abruptly exploded with new angles, and he found it a bit overwhelming.

“Evantralis,” he said again, this time more in acknowledgement as he stalled for composure.

“Good evening, Venomtreader.”

Now what? What, exactly, was he going to ask of her? “Forgive me, I do not know if this falls under your element, but…I need to infiltrate a church. Undetected.”

She waited still.

Um…
“I wonder if there is a way you can help me. With…what you do.” He gestured to her lucid form to illustrate what he meant. “Is there some way to transfer…or
share
invisibility?”

“Share, yes. If it is me that you use.”

“How?”

“Contact and concentration.”

“Could you accompany me?”

“Not if this in an escapade behind your Mastress’s back. The lady Mastodon would know when I treaded beyond the Ruins. We have a range.”

“Can you not stretch what the others are restricted to somehow? Since you have…power?”

“Yes. I can stray marginally farther than the others.”

Cursing, Godren cast about for alternative ideas. Not spawning any brilliant schemes, he returned to the slave. “Is there no other way to achieve what I seek?”

“You could bring me a collar, and allow me to enslave you. It takes practice to master fading in and out yourself, but as the magic-bearing applicator, I can keep you invisible from a distance.”

Godren blanched. “I’m told I would not be able to undo it.”

“I can.”

“Are you certain?”

“I have the power. But only if you can contrive to get back to me before the Lady Mastodon sees you – or, more appropriately, merely catches wind of you. She’s good at that.”

Godren didn’t know if he could handle the idea of being enslaved by invisibility on top of the numbness that cancelled his senses. It would be like…not existing at all. The thought of being trapped like that was just too much. And what was he risking it for? To go to the princess when he didn’t want to allow himself to associate with her ever again? She had summoned him, but she had never said it was urgent.

It was just the manner in which he had received the summons that drew him so strongly.

“Where would I even get one?” he asked, realizing that in itself might be too tricky an operation.

“Mastodon’s chamber. She keeps them in a floor compartment beneath a choice rug.”

Impossible. Again. “I don’t suppose you could discreetly acquire one for me?”

“I could.”

She could? “Would that…be too much to ask of you?”

For the first time, the slave’s stony face softened. “What is it that you chase with such determination, Venomtreader? What lies at this church?”

Absently fingering his pocket, Godren hesitated, and then chuckled sheepishly. “A note came to me on the breeze, addressed to me, summoning me. It’s silly, I know. Other than that…I have no idea. Just that it came from the soul that I thought of when you told me to anchor myself to this world.”

“The princess?”

Godren glanced at her sharply.

“I was there when your Spitebrother poisoned you to die over this woman, remember? I know of her place in the puzzle you make of yourself.”

Spitebrother? Godren smiled slightly at the name Ossen had earned for himself. And of course, she had been there.

“Yes,” he said, sobering. “The princess. Who I swore to never see again.”

Taking a step beyond softening, Evantralis actually let a hint of a smile display itself on her face. “The breeze is never to be taken as silly, Venomtreader. I believe in the wind. And if the wind speaks to you, you must respond. I will bring you what you need.”

Humbled, Godren shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do to repay all that you’ve done selflessly for my sake, is there?” he asked sorrowfully, realizing the weight of her deeds and the lack of reward that they were met with. “I am forever indebted to you.”

“You cannot be indebted to a slave, Venomtreader. We live only to serve.”

“That surely cannot rest so easily with you,” Godren objected, appalled.

“Perhaps I have contented myself with defying the system and discreetly serving who I choose,” Evantralis suggested with a gleam in her eye, and then she began to fade. “I’ll be with you, Venomtreader.”

“Before midday tomorrow,” Godren thought to add at the last moment.

“Yes,” the alley whispered back, and then the illusion of being alone returned.

*

It took a very conscious employment of will to stand still for Evantralis to perform the enslavement. It was only conceptual, he knew, but the implications and real-life, inhuman dominance it represented were extremely humbling. As the slave woman drew the open contraption close to his neck, he eyed it warily and went inevitably stiff with derision. No matter how well he had prepared himself, and even trusting the woman to remove it when the time came, that moment of freedom about to be snuffed before your very eyes was enough to make anyone start to second-guess what they had called down upon them.

What am I doing?
He suddenly wondered, trying not to panic.
Who willingly submits to another person’s sole claim and superior control? Who surrenders their own will like this?

“One who is in love,” Evantralis said soothingly, and only turned her disarmingly penetrating eyes on him when he cast her a startled look. Had he spoken aloud? Or did Evantralis have a tendency to read minds?

In the moment that he stared at her in surprise, forgetting about the ritual at hand, she snapped the collar around his neck. It brought him back in alarm, but the only thing for it then was to put it out of his mind and pretend it wasn’t there. He shook his head, thinking instead about her words.

“It doesn’t make a difference,” he said. “She is the princess of Raven City.”

“And you are only a corrupt, wretched criminal, yet the wind speaks to you,” Evantralis replied, drawing a thought-provoked look from Godren as her words revealed a different way of looking at things. “That is an honor, Godren.”

He fell silent, considering that.

‘
You are less than you fear, and more than you think you are,’
the slave’s unspoken voice said in his head. The uncanny communication sent a shiver down Godren’s spine, but he was prepared enough for oddities in general at that point that he was able to mostly ignore the effect.

“And you are invisible,” Evantralis finished aloud.

Reminded of the reason they were taking part in this interaction, Godren lifted an arm for inspection, eager to investigate his perception of his own invisibility. He saw nothing, and suddenly he felt extremely disoriented.