Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (22 page)

She knew that the Imperials would have barred the doors
shut. She knew that Warren had left, presumably through some
entrance he knew about. But she had no idea where it was, and for
all she knew that way was now blocked as well. The front of the
estate was ablaze, and by now the roof would be as well. And the
rest of the house was doused in some sort of liquid that would
ignite like a tinder box soon. She needed to be gone with the girls.

But Catelyn also knew that throughout the downstairs
were windows. She just had to find one facing the side of the house
and not the street, and break it open. She felt along the ground, on
hands and knees, using mostly her hearing to guide her to one of
the walls near the back of the estate. It was a slow and sweltering
effort, but finally, her outstretched hand contacted the wall, and
she sighed with relief. She got to her knees and felt along the wall,
desperately, and after a panicked twenty breaths or so of fruitless
searching, her hand finally found a pane of heavily leaded glass.

The roar of the fire and the oppressive heat was
inundating the area just a pace away from her, and she could sense
that the floor they were standing on would flash soon. The girls
had started screaming before reaching the wall, and both of them
clutched at Catelyn’s side, hysterical, making it hard for her to do
much.

With the window under her palm, she extended her bubble
slightly, even though doing so left her feeling seared raw, and
discovered that maybe the Divines hadn’t given up on her yet. On
the floor, just out of arm’s reach, she sensed a heavy wrought iron
candelabra that had been knocked over in the confusion. She
ignored the girls wailing for her to stay with them, and detached
herself, making a beeline for it.

As she wrapped her hand around the heavy metal, pain
lanced through her palm, the metal having been heated through by
the intense flames. She pulled her hand away, clutching the flesh
which was already starting to pucker and blister, and a breath later
the estate roared in a final death throe, as a section of the upper
floor came crashing through the ceiling above their heads and onto
the floor nearby.

Catelyn knew she couldn’t wait a second longer. Tapping
every ounce of strength she had left, she tore the lower half of one
of her pant legs free, and used the cloth to wrap her burnt and
throbbing hand. With the wrapping protecting her hand
somewhat, she gripped the metal once more, pain arcing through
every nerve, and hefted the candelabra. With a primal scream of
rage, Catelyn rushed at the window, aiming the shaft of the metal
at where she knew the window to be.

She felt a jarring wrench throughout her entire upper body
as glass and metal met. She heard a cracking, but for now the glass
held. She lifted the candelabra and struck at the window a second
time, and the window shattered, along with something in her arm.
Her shoulder felt dislocated, but she ignored the pain when the
blast of cooler air from outside hit her in the face. She left the
candelabra sticking through the glass, then ran it around the edges
of the window, clearing the glass that remained away from the
window frame as best she could. She felt the shards dropping to
the ground at her feet, and she tried to avoid stepping in them as
she worked.

When she heard and felt no more shards falling, Catelyn
grabbed Elexia and lifted her to the window. Even though the girl
was skinnier than any child should be, this effort still sent more
lancing pain into Catelyn’s hurt shoulder. Elexia scrambled out of
her grasp, through the window and to the ground below. The
smoke, drawn by the venting provided by the window, was
beginning to choke Catelyn, and she tried not to take deep breaths
as she lifted Sera to the window.

As Sera scrambled through and landed lightly in the
alleyway behind the estate, Catelyn steeled herself for what was
next. She felt the opening with her hands. She could squeeze
through, but just barely. She would no doubt receive additional
cuts from the remaining shards still lodged in the frame; she could
already feel a stinging in the soles of her feet, no doubt a result of
cuts from the glass on the floor that she had been forced to
carelessly step in, in order to lift the girls through the broken
window frame, as well as the accelerant she had walked through
for the last several whispers.

As she reached her hands through, clearing her elbows of
the frame, the last of Dane Callum’s estate caught fire and within a
breath she felt a wall of flame racing toward her. She pushed with
all of her strength, feeling the shards of glass scrape and embed
themselves in her flesh, ignoring the pain as she fell through the
open window and landing roughly on the dirty stone ground of the
alley. Her world turned black momentarily, as she felt
consciousness beginning to slip from her grasp and she fought it.

Where the window had been but a breath ago, a hole
spouting jets of flame now stood. The girls were there, helping
Catelyn get to her feet, and guiding her back and toward the
building behind Dane Callum’s estate, which was still mostly
intact. She felt light-headed and woozy, and unable to do much
more than move on instinct, she let the two young girls guide her
silently away from the scene of the conflagration.

Ortis stood with arms clasped behind his back, watching
his handiwork play out across the night sky with complete
detachment. Billowing towers of smoke rose into the air, their
bases lit orange from the hundreds of fires below, sending a sign to
the Divines themselves, if indeed they still existed, that men, not
gods, ruled in Ereas. He had never quite shared Uriel’s fondness
for fire, but he had to admit that it had proven to be a remarkably
effective deterrent over the sojourns.

When Uriel had sent for him just a handful of prayers
earlier, he had felt a sense of dread. Since the two of them had
stopped their physical relationship many sojourns before, Ortis
had lived his life believing that every summons would be his last.
That the wise and powerful Emperor of the known world would
have come to realize that the time had come at last for Ortis’
usefulness to reach its end. Ortis lived his last ten sojourns with an
ever-increasing sense of foreboding and pessimism.

But once again, his feelings had turned out to be idle
paranoia, as Uriel still seemed to find ways to inspire Ortis and his
special brand of reckoning. Still, that uncertainty had been the
only constant in Ortis’ life for so long that he had long ago stopped
caring for anyone or anything, especially himself. His life was
forfeit.

Earlier this night, those were the thoughts that echoed in
the emptiness when Uriel had sent for him. The Emperor had
explained the situation with the Danes, and by the end, Ortis had
felt alive briefly. He had felt the spark of life and excitement to be
the righteous hand of the Emperor’s Will, as he once had been. He
had ridden from the gates of the Citadel with such fire in him, and
then…

Something had happened. As quickly as they had been
stoked, the flames in his heart guttered out, and the numbness
returned.

Why have I become so lost, even to myself?
he wondered.
What concern is it to me?
He would do as he was commanded, and that was all that
mattered. He believed he was already dead. Nothing else made
sense.
And so Ortis watched his life unfold before his eyes, as
though it were someone else’s, no longer caring. When Uriel
barked orders at him, he rejoiced at the brief moment of
exhilaration that he felt to be so needed. Later, after that faded, he
simply complied. When Uriel looked longingly at him, the way he
used to, Ortis wished that feeling could go on forever, but as soon
as he left the man’s presence, his heart shriveled and the cold
emptiness filled him up once more.
The only time he felt anything anymore was when Enaz or
some other functionary summoned him to an audience with Uriel.
Try as he might to disguise his feelings with apathy, to shut off his
emotions and contain them deep within himself, he always felt
something when that summons eventually came. Sometimes it was
fear, sometimes it was desire.
This day, it was an almost overwhelming sense that,
despite his successful campaign in Belkyn to root out those who
would whisper of uprisings, the Emperor was finally through with
him. He’d known the man almost his whole life, and had seen the
Emperor cut away everyone and everything that had mattered to
him eventually. Ortis could only assume that he too was living on
borrowed time.
But today at least, Ortis had been wrong. If he was to be
honest with himself, he had to admit that he secretly wished that
he had been right. Ortis was old, and he was tired. And he had
spent the past ten sojourns wishing that someone, anyone, would
be brave enough, strong enough or even lucky enough to be the
one to end his miserable existence for him.
Ortis chastised himself for entertaining such thoughts.
Every time he watched the rising flames of a Purge, he got maudlin
like this. And it was unbecoming of a man of his station. He tore
his eyes from the fire and looked to his men, many of them also
standing, mesmerized by the great walls of fire now consuming
whole city blocks.
He strode amongst his men, clapping armored shoulders
and acting the proud commander, despite feeling none of the pride
that had once filled him to the point of overflowing. They had done
an efficient job of carrying out the Emperor’s Will. His whims.
In truth, that is exactly the word that Ortis had come to
describe the Emperor Uriel III in those moments when he was
away from the man’s presence. He didn’t know exactly when it had
happened, but as well as losing his desire to live, he had also begun
to question the sanity of his oldest friend and former lover.
Orders and motives that had once seemed to Ortis to be
the Will of a brilliant and revolutionary leader, now simply struck
him as the hollow perversions of a madman, and his commands
composed of emptiness. Ortis knew it was a capital crime to even
think such thoughts, as his most recent trip to Belkyn had
reminded him, but he couldn’t help but think that these Purges
were purely the sort of act one would expect of a petulant child.
It was a strange feeling, questioning everything he had
believed in his entire life. He did not wish to face these thoughts at
all, and so he ran from them, seeking drink or the company of a
boy to forget himself for a while. Although even that no longer held
the pleasures for him that they once had, to the point where he
wondered where such thoughts had even come from.
Ortis thought back to the night after his return from
Belkyn. He had brought two boys home from his campaign, one for
Uriel as was expected, and one for himself. But as he had retired to
his bed chamber that night, he had not felt desire, but
something...different. Something he had no experience of, and so
could not put a name to. And he had simply held the boy in his
arms, cradling him to his chest as the boy sobbed. And then Uriel
had called for him.
Ortis was beginning to think that he was losing his mind.
He knew that his advancing age made him susceptible to things
like the rotting of the mind, and he wondered if this was what was
happening with him.
Why else, after a lifetime of unquestioning loyalty and
faith in his Emperor and his cause, should he now feel such
confusion? What was next?
Ortis snapped himself out of his reverie once again. Even
away from the flames now, his mind turned to reflect his own
inner turmoil. His cheeks colored in shame, but thankfully Ortis
knew that the glow from the flames would hide all evidence of his
weakness.
He focused his attention on his mission. He had personally
led the assault on Dane Eyrris’ compound, and had also personally
killed the man, gutting him and trailing his intestines around the
room for him to see before he expired. All as Uriel had
commanded.
Through the pain and terror, Eyrris had tried to plead with
him, describing how they had arrived at this conflict. He described
the details of the theft, of something remarkable in his possession,
and at first Ortis didn’t care. Eyrris, with half his guts trailing out
in front of him, had tried to justify his pursuit of the thief.
Ortis still did not care, but this facet of the story at least
had captured Ortis’ attention. The single-mindedness with which
the Danes had acted in opposition to the Empire was...rare. He
had been silent throughout Eyrris’ confession, but this piqued his
curiosity enough to ask Eyrris why such a petty crime, especially
by the standards of the residents of the Seat, had inspired so much
passion that they would choose to defy the Emperor himself.
When Eyrris described the details of the crime; the way
that the theft had been carried out, the entrance and exit from a
third-floor window, the bloody footprints leading to the final grisly
calling card on the pane of glass, and the insult directed at Eyrris
using the remains of one of Eyrris’ playthings...Ortis felt a spark of
inspiration at the thief’s brazenness, and the story caught his
imagination. It still didn’t seem to warrant the degree of defiance
that the crime had elicited, but his interest had been piqued.
And Ortis at that moment had realized something which
had given him pause. Even here, with his guts strung out across
the floor, the pain surely driving him to madness, Dane Eyrris was
holding something back about the theft. Whatever the thief had
taken, the Dane remained elusive about what it was. It was
something he wished to keep hidden from the Empire. Even under
torture, Eyrris was willing to defy the Emperor. Ortis couldn’t tell
why, but that thought had filled him with something like
excitement.
Now, standing outside of the last of the Dane’s estates, the
home of Dane Callum, Ortis idly wondered about this thief and the
object which they had targeted, enough to spark these flames he
watched carrying the ashes of the dead into the night sky. This was
a person who was bold enough to steal from the Sado-Sexual
Elites, and even more so, to insult one of them in their own home.
Eyrris insisted that it had to have been young, or a man of short
stature, judging from the size of the footprints left behind, though
Ortis suspected it might have been one of the half-men.
In Pyrus, where Ortis had been born and lived before
being born again to serve the Empire, he had seen a number of
adults, fully-grown men and women, who had the stature of
children. These half-men were rare even in his former homeland,
and there were reportedly none in Exeter, but they were renowned
in the north for being excellent tricksters and thieves. Uriel would
have never tolerated them within his walls if he had knowledge of
one. Still, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that there was one
living in secret within the slums somewhere.
But even more curious to Ortis was this object which had
caused so much commotion. As part of his authority, Ortis felt
obligated to learn everything he could about it, yet this proved
impossible. Up until the point where Eyrris finally expired,
succumbing to blood loss and shock, he remained tight-lipped
about it.
The second Dane that he had visited earlier that night,
Dane Elger, had sworn that neither he nor Dane Callum had been
shown the item, or had even been told entirely what it was, only
that it was invaluable. Elger he had punished by flaying the meat
from his arms and legs, and Ortis had performed enough
interrogations to know that Elger was being truthful.
And so when he’d arrived at the final Dane’s estate, he
simply ordered his men to torch the place, resigned to the fact that
this mystery would die with the three Danes.
Ortis watched now as the last of the Dane’s estate began to
collapse in on itself, the second floor’s weight crashing into the
first. The roof was partially destroyed, showing gaping holes that
were spouting jets of flame and black smoke. Ortis, in truth, wasn’t
even sure that Dane Callum was in there. Part of him didn’t care,
for the Emperor would certainly not care. These Purges were not
about punishing those specific individuals who transgressed
against him. They were messages to everyone within the Seat, of
what would be in store for them if they did not heed the Emperor’s
will. Ortis never liked leaving loose ends, but in this, sojourns of
similar experiences had proven the effectiveness of Uriel’s
methods.
Over the roar of the flames, a sound reached him. A
cracking pane of glass. Ortis didn’t think anything about it at first,
as it was quite normal for the pressure of the air inside a building
when it was at the height of the blaze to cause some of the
windows to blow out. But this sound was then followed by more
glass falling, then the sounds of screaming voices. Children’s
voices.
Ortis didn’t quite know why, but he reacted. He rushed to
the front of the estate, searching for the source of the screaming,
but saw nothing. He listened closer, and could hear a shout again,
and he could tell it was coming from the side of the house, in the
alley.
As he rounded the corner, with the wrought iron estate
wall between him and the alleyway, he saw shadows moving
between the burning house and the next building, which was just
outside the perimeter that his men had established to keep the
Purge from destroying the entire Seat.
He approached the wrought iron, and could see figures
now, three of them, amidst the haze and smoke emanating from
the estate. His men had done an efficient job of setting up the burn
zone for the Purge, and he would not be able to get any closer
without going back around to the front of the estate and going
through to the other side of the wall. The heat from the flames was
intense this close to the estate, and he put an arm up to shield his
face from the worst of it, squinting to try and make out more
details of the scene playing out before him.
He thought it must have been some of the Dane’s men,
maybe even the Dane himself, trying to escape the blaze. But what
he saw through the smoke and flames took him aback.
Of the three figures he could make out, two of them were
small children, girls from the look of them though it was hard to be
sure, nearly naked but for some dark rags, their bodies bloody
from a number of cuts. Ortis could tell that they had just come
through the window that they were both staring at, looking at it
with concern, as though they were waiting for something.
Before he could call out for his men, something happened
which made him pause. Two bare arms protruded from the
window, followed by, and Ortis could not believe his eyes, the head
of a young woman with a shock of dirty red hair. This was quickly
followed by a naked torso, small breasts gleaming pale in the
darkness of the alley, and finally as the girl sprung out of the
window to the ground below, Ortis saw legs covered by dark pants,
half torn and capped with two pale bare feet.
The sight of this girl, for reasons he could not explain, sent
waves of feelings deep into his very being and he experienced
something like exhilaration then, partly because his analytical
mind began to weave together a narrative for this night. He did not
think it coincidence that the Danes had been plagued by a small,
unshod thief, and now here was a small barefoot girl in her teens
escaping one of the Dane’s estates. He gripped the wrought iron
bars of the estate wall with white knuckles, sensing that perhaps
the mystery had not died with the last of the Dane’s after all.
But the other part of his reaction was purely instinct. He
couldn’t explain it, but this girl tugged at him, pulled at some
deeply buried and long forgotten part of him, and he simply
couldn’t resist the lure of her.
This was the first emotional reaction he had experienced
besides the constant fear since...well it had been a very, very long
time. He felt his knees get weak, and his bowels turn to water. It
was almost too much to bear. He gripped the iron bars in his
hands tighter, to steady himself, as he watched while the girl was
helped up by the two smaller children.
For more sojourns than he could remember, Ortis had felt
like death. He had seen firsthand, and had been responsible for,
horrors unlike anything he could ever have once imagined, and
experienced the most perverse of pleasures.
But this simple sight, in a way that he could only describe
as transcendent, blew life into him as nothing had before.
Watching her, his mind triggered a memory long buried. A
memory he had long since believed had been lost to him forever.
He was four. His father sat beside him, both of them
sitting on a grassy river bank with their bare feet dangling in the
cool waters of Bryn’s March. His father was teaching him the
proper way to bait a hook with an earthworm they had dug out of
the dirt. It wriggled as it was speared onto the metal hook and
Ortis felt himself get queasy. His father reached out and pulled
him close, comforting the boy who was seeing death up close for
the first time.
His father explaining that it was the order of things, the
will of the Divines that the lower creatures be fed to the higher,
and that someday they too would die and be returned to the soil, to
be fed to the lower, as part of the balance of this world.