Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (43 page)

Catelyn wandered through the streets of the Seat, alone.
She was moving toward the central marketplace, her feet
carrying her toward the stall where Silena always set up her
business selling antiquities. She saw no Imperial soldiers between
her and her destination and sighed in relief. It seemed that she,
Ortis and Silena had managed to get away with their daring escape
after all.
There had been so many moments over the past span
when she had become convinced that it was all going to end
horribly, but she smiled at the realization that it had all been
pulled off, maybe not with perfection, but that they had walked
away from. She was already feeling much stronger, and she felt
like skipping past the morning crowds of shoppers making their
way through the marketplace.
As always she could smell the various food vendors grilling
meat on a spit, or baking bread in their clay ovens, and it made her
mouth water. She walked over to the nearest stalls selling food,
and peered down at their selections.
She was shocked to see that all the food on the vendors
tables and trays were covered in bright, crimson blood. The
nearest vendor looked up at her with a smile, displaying rotted
yellow teeth.
She stepped back, and moved to the next vendor,
wondering who on Ereas would possibly want to eat flatbread with
a drizzled glaze of blood.
The ground beneath her feet turned warm as the sun rose
high into the sky, which was the shade of a soft powdery blue, a
very strange color for the sky to be, but she thought it was
pleasant. She relished the warm stone brushing against her soles
and she slowed down, lingering to enjoy the sensations just a few
breaths longer.
She reached Silena’s stall, but the woman was nowhere to
be found, which was strange, because it was the height of the
midday rush, and all of her goods were laid out on the tables of the
stall. Catelyn felt a flood of panic, wondering what had happened
to her friend. Silena would never have left her stall unattended like
this.
Catelyn looked around, and there stood Ortis, glistening in
pristine white armor, his rough face a stark contrast to the finery
he now wore. She half laughed when she saw him, looking
completely out of place in the dirt-covered streets of the slums.
He glared at her without emotion, arms folded behind his
back.
She made her way toward him, partly to get a closer look
at his ornate set of armor, and partly so that she could ask him if
he knew where Silena was. She was halfway to where he stood,
when two arms gripped her shoulders, spinning her around. She
was taken aback to come face to face...with herself. Immediately,
Catelyn recognized that she must be dreaming.
Catelyn hadn’t seen her own reflection since she’d been a
girl, six sojourns ago, but she knew without a doubt that this ghost
standing before her was...her. Only it was a vision of herself from
before the Emperor had used the bloodfire on her the second time,
for this girl’s face and eyes were a webbed patchwork of raw
looking scars and tissue. The phantom version of her had
bedraggled red hair and was wearing her own tattered clothing.
Although Catelyn knew this dream self was just a part of
her imagining, and that she would no doubt wake soon. This was
the first time Catelyn had ever envisioned how she must have
looked to everyone else.
Catelyn, that is her dream self, reached her hands up to
her face, to where her blindfold would have been. Catelyn watched
in horror as her dream self put her fingers into the sockets where
her eyes would be, and gouged her fingers deep into the orbs,
blood pouring like red tears down her face.
Catelyn, the real Catelyn, wished to scream on her dream
self’s behalf, but she found that in this dream, she was mute, a fact
which Catelyn somehow knew had been decreed by the Emperor.
Even in her dreams, his arbitrary whims invaded and curtailed her
sense of liberty. Her dream self removed her hands to reveal
gaping, bloody holes where her eyes should be. As Catelyn stared
in horror at the sight of her dream self’s mutilation, the
doppelganger produced Ortis’ dagger, the one she had used to
sever the rope on the drawbridge, and silently drew it across
Catelyn’s throat.
Her dream self watched impassively with empty, blood
filled eye sockets as the real Catelyn mutely felt her life pump
rhythmically out onto the street below.

Catelyn awoke with a start, clutching at her neck and
trembling in fear. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, like a
caged beast pressing itself hopelessly against its prison time and
time again. She tried to settle her anxiety and take stock of her
situation. The first thing that she became aware of was arguing,
coming from behind a closed door and down a short hallway. She
rolled over and looked around, to find that she was in a small
room, lying on the floor with blankets pulled up over her, and the
flimsy door to the room hanging open slightly.

She identified the voices of Ortis and Silena, and she could
hear that they were having a heated disagreement about what their
next course of action should be.

“Ortis, you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, if you
believe for one second that we’ll be safe here,” Silena said with
disdain.

“Listen, shopkeeper, I know the man, and how his mind
works. I know his weaknesses in a way you couldn’t even begin to
fathom,” Ortis replied.

“I don’t need a reminder of how close you were to your
precious Emperor. I haven’t forgotten what you did for him.”
Silena barely concealed her loathing for the man she was talking
with.

“Then you would do well to recall the stakes of making the
wrong decision now.”
“Oh? And just what is it about this place that you think
keeps us hidden from view?” Silena asked sarcastically.
“Me,” Ortis said without a shred of hesitation or
irreverence. Catelyn could hear in his voice, that he truly believed
he could keep them safe here. Catelyn tuned out the rest of the
argument, and felt a little like she had when she’d woken as a
young girls and heard her own parents arguing. Now, as then, she
didn’t wish to hear them yelling. She cared for Silena more than
she had about anyone in sojourns. And Ortis. Well, that had been
growing more and more complicated over time.
She felt gratitude that he had put his own life at risk to
save hers, and she held some small amount of pity for this man,
but it did not last for long. At the recollection of what the man was,
and the atrocities he had committed in his life, she knew with
certainty, and no small amount of dread, that she and Silena would
not simply need to find refuge from the Empire, but they would
need to find a way to get free of Ortis now as well.
She kicked herself free of the blankets, looking around the
room. It was spartan, but surprisingly well maintained, with a
small table along one wall, two chairs and a stool. It looked like a
room for reading, as there were a number of books and scrolls
arrayed on the table. The sight of books and the prospects of being
able to read again, thrilled her. But she decided to put those
feelings aside and deal with the situation at hand.
She stood and crossed to the door, opening it to reveal the
hallway beyond. As she stepped out, the door creaked and the
arguing stopped, as both sides seemed unwilling to continue
bickering with Catelyn in the middle.
The hallway was likewise simply decorated, but it looked
lived in, and Catelyn wondered who resided here. As Catelyn
emerged from the hallway into an open room, she saw Ortis and
Silena standing less that two paces apart from each other. Ortis
was now wearing standard Imperial peasant clothing, and looked
much less imposing out of his massive armor. They looked at her
standing in the archway, but she could see the tension still
lingering between them, as though they both wished to continue
their argument.
“Catelyn, it’s so good to see you up,” Silena said, softening
first.
“How long was I asleep?” she asked.
“The better part of two days,” Silena said quietly. Catelyn
felt confused. It hadn’t felt as though she had slept so long, but
Silena went on to explain. “Ortis and I agreed to give you
a...draught of a healing tincture. It allowed you to enter a
dreamless sleep so that you could recover. We woke you twice to
give you nourishment, but you were not really conscious.”
Catelyn shook her head to dislodge some of her lingering
exhaustion, and wondered if this treatment was the only thing that
Ortis and her had agreed on since their rescue effort.
Two days?
she wondered.
It didn’t feel like that to me.

She had many questions, but she was still feeling
somewhat light-headed and instead crossed to one of the chairs in
the room, a wide bowl of wood thick with cushions, and sat down
again idly wondering whose dwelling this was. The chair itself was
surprisingly comfortable, but such comfort felt out of place in a
place so devoid of personality.

When she thought about that dichotomy, she quickly
realized that it had to be Ortis’ place of residence. She looked at
the furniture in the room, and the lack of decor on the walls, and it
just fit. Ortis and Silena still stood their ground, watching her, and
it made Catelyn feel self-conscious, so she began asking questions
to take the focus off of her.

“So, we’ve been here for two days?”
“Yes,” Ortis said.
“I heard you both arguing about staying here.”
Both Ortis and Silena looked down at the floor, and for

some reason she couldn’t fathom, again Catelyn was strangely
reminded of her parents, and the way that they had often looked
embarrassed when she had caught them arguing. She laughed at
the absurd comparison, and they both looked at her like she was
mad, but this only made her laugh all the harder.

Silena was confused, but she soon was infected by
Catelyn’s mirth, and after a few breaths they were laughing
together hysterically as Ortis looked on in utter confusion.

“Sorry, I realize I’m probably still feeling the effects of the
tincture. What did you give me anyway?” she asked.
“It’s called dream nettle. I’ve used it before as a curative,
but it’s rare to find any outside of the Citadel these days. Ortis has
some here. He won’t say much about this place, or why he has
supplies of food and medicine stashed here. This is his ‘refuge’ as
he calls it.”
Catelyn looked at Ortis, and she could read the look in his
eyes.
“You’ve been planning this for a long time, haven’t you?”
she asked him directly.
Ortis simply nodded once, his face betraying him as he
bowed his head toward the ground, seemingly in shame, though
Catelyn could not read his reasons there. His silence was not
enough for Catelyn, and she realized that, before she did anything
else, she needed to get something out of the way before there could
be any further discussion between the three of them.
“Why, Ortis? Why did you come for me?” she asked.
He looked up, tears running down both cheeks.
“So that you can kill me,” he said, without hesitation.
Catelyn felt her stomach lurch. His sincerity, and the look
in his eyes, told her without any doubt that he was telling her the
truth. Silena stared at him with her mouth half open, unable to
find words to speak at this revelation. Catelyn curled her knees up
and hugged them to her, unsure how to respond. She reached for
her lucky ring, only to remember that it had been taken from her
when she’d been been stripped and thrown into her cell.
She looked down and felt the indentation in her flesh and
saw the strip of pale skin on her toe where it had lived for
sojourns, becoming almost a part of her, and she mourned the loss
of the last vestige of the old life she had led. She also missed the
fact that it had always been able to help her mind to focus, to
puzzle her way out of difficult problems.
Finally she admitted defeat, and said “I don’t...I don’t
understand.”
Ortis simply looked at her, his eyes pleading. “You must
kill me.” As he said this, he looked at her with an intensity that
made her deeply uncomfortable.
Catelyn couldn’t take it anymore, and she jumped out of
the chair and toward the door. She bounded into the hallway,
looking for the nearest exit. She found a window in a room to her
left, and crossed the sparse room to get to it. She pushed up the
sash, and climbed up onto the window ledge.
She saw the Seat before her, the Citadel tower just visible
in the distance to the south, and although she hadn’t been this far
north before, based on several factors she could guess that she was
in the North Quarter of the city, possibly even somewhere near the
Forma Channel. The window she was looking out of was up about
four floors, and she could see people milling about below.
A fleeting thought entered her mind that she should just
jump. Just take one step out and let the pull of Ereas put an end to
all of her pain forever. But as soon as she thought it, she chastised
herself for the selfishness and cowardice of taking that road.
Ortis appeared at the door to the room.
“Get inside, girl, before you’re seen,” he barked.
She looked at him with disgust, and realized that she had
tears of her own on her cheeks now. She expanded her bubble and
pushed herself out, holding the ledge with her arms. She found
hand and footholds with her senses, and proceeded to climb up to
the roof. She heard Ortis scramble across the room to try and
reach out and grab her by the foot or the ankle, but fast as he was,
she was faster.
She scrambled up to the rooftop, and sat on the mosscovered tiles, looking up at the sky. She felt a chill run down her
spine as she looked out over the tops of the hundreds of buildings
in the Seat, and above the Wall, to the radiant sky above. The sky
was hazy, as she remembered it being during her childhood, and
the color of muddy water. She hadn’t really been able to take the
time, since her rescue, to simply enjoy the return of her eyesight.
She saw the disc of the sun glowing behind the wall of
haze, and reveled in it. She had always loved the sun as a child,
and even after losing her sight, she had enjoyed feeling its warm
embrace on her skin. There was something calming, something
reassuring to Catelyn that no matter how dark the world seemed to
get, the sun was always there to shower the world with its light and
warmth. She hoped it would illuminate the path forward for her
now.
She wasn’t planning to run away from Ortis or Silena, but
everything had been turned upside down or ended up going crazy
over the past several days, and she needed time to clear her head
and to think, especially after Ortis’ bizarre and unexpected
request.
Why on Ereas does Ortis think I would ever agree to kill
him?
she wondered.
And why does he want me to?
She had her theories of course. She could sense that Ortis
was somehow changing. Whatever he had been, he seemed
desperate to help her for some reason only he could understand,
but it was palpable in every breath he took, and with every beat of
his heart. Catelyn had begun to suppose that part of why he was
helping her was that he had wanted to change his life, but she
hadn’t anticipated that he simply wanted to end it.
But Catelyn couldn’t fathom his strange request. It just
didn’t make sense. If he wanted to die so much, what was
preventing him from carrying out the act himself, or better yet to
simply turn himself into the Empire and let them do it for him? If
he wanted so badly to be dead, there were any number of ways for
him to accomplish that goal.
She had seen his eyes, though. There was genuine longing
and sincerity in them, and she knew that this was as important to
him as anything ever had been to him. His words brought up all
the lives she already tallied on her conscience. She put her head in
her hands and thought about the people who had already died as a
result of her actions, and she also considered the man whose life
she had taken directly: Jaff.
Thinking of that moment brought sick feelings to her
stomach. She had not wished to dwell on the encounter with the
brute in Dane Callum’s residence, knowing that she had not had
any choice about whether she should have killed the man. But
knowing that didn’t mean she had only good feelings about the
experience. The truth was that, since that night, she had been
awakened several times from nightmares where she replayed the
moment when she had killed him over and over again.
Jaff’s death may have been necessary, may even have been
fully justified, yet it still haunted her. She tried to imagine what his
face might have looked like, but it was just a nebulous blob in her
memory, the residue of what little information she’d been able to
glean from her bubble. She imagined the long rust-coated nail
embedded in his face, penetrating all the way through to his brain.
She had made such a point of avoiding confrontations for
so long, that she felt not just guilt at having killed a man, even one
who probably deserved it but a profound sense of disappointment
that she had allowed herself to be backed into a corner with no
other way out.
As she sat contemplating these thoughts, she watched as
the sun slipped inexorably towards the horizon, as the world
moved her and everyone in the Seat towards the close of another
day. She knew that Ortis and Silena were likely still not agreeing
on their next course of action, but Catelyn knew what she had to
do. She only had the one choice, and she was going to need the
help of both of them to make it happen.
She watched the sky in wonder for a while longer, and
then when she was ready, she climbed down from the rooftop and
slipped in through the open window. She entered the room she
had run into to get to the window, and found Ortis and Silena in
the same room where she had left them. They were both seated,
separately and facing away from each other, unwilling to look at
one another, so great was the gulf between them.
As Catelyn appeared in the room, Ortis stood, and made as
though he was about to say something, but Catelyn raised a hand
to silence him. He remained quiet and awaited her bidding. Silena
stood as well, looking annoyed.
“Well, Catelyn. I hope that helped,” she remarked, and
Catelyn could almost taste the bitterness in her words.
“I’m sorry Silena. I needed time to think. To figure out
what I wanted to do. And I have,” Catelyn told her.
She looked back and forth between Ortis and Silena.
“First of all, I will be forever grateful to the both of you for
getting me out of there,” she began, her voice cracking from the
intensity of the emotional experiences she had been through in the
past span. “I know that you both risked your lives to get me out,
and I can see that working together to free me was something
neither of you would have chosen if you could have helped it.
You’ll never know how grateful I am for that sacrifice, and I can
never repay such a debt. And I know that while this place may
seem secure, we can’t remain here much longer. Or at least, I can’t
remain here. My future is clear and I’ve thought about this for a
while now: I need to leave the Seat.”
Catelyn paused to gauge their reactions. Ortis simply
stared placidly at her, while Silena’s face was struggling to contain
her disappointment and sadness. Neither of them spoke, so she
continued.
“The Empire will never stop searching the Seat for me.
They’ll simply punish anyone I’ve ever known, and anyone who
has had any contact with me, until they get to me. Ortis, tell me if
I’m wrong.”
Ortis looked at her, considering a moment before
answering.
“I can’t. No one has ever dared to defy the Emperor so
blatantly and lived. And now, by escaping from the Citadel, it’s not
entirely clear to me what Uriel will do now. I would imagine
something like this would not be soon forgotten, and all three of us
would be at the top of a very short list of his enemies. But you’ve
seen how the Emperor operates. He could be burning the Seat to
the ground right now, looking for the three of us, as long as he
believes we’re alive. The question is why hasn’t he? I have to
admit, things have been...unusual the past few spans.”
That thought filled Catelyn with revulsion. Would the lives
of hundreds, of thousands, be added to her conscience?
“Ortis, stop trying to scare the girl. Catelyn, we don’t know
what the Emperor has been doing since your escape but we should
just be thankful that the city isn’t being burned,” Silena added.
“We’ve been laying low in this house ever since we arrived, but
from our vantage point, it would appear that the Seat is going on
as it always has. There have been no plumes on the horizon, no
rioting, no waves of soldiers moving from house to house
indiscriminately killing.”
“It’s unlike the Uriel I know,” Ortis admitted quietly.
“Even if it were, Ortis brought us here for a reason, and
access to this place is tightly controlled. He and I do have our
differences but I’ve taken a look around, and at least for a short
while, I agree that we won’t need to worry about being found. He
had the place fully stocked with enough food and supplies to
survive for spans,” Silena informed her.
“With three of us, the rations will be depleted before then,
but there’s at least a span’s worth for all of us. Longer if we ration
ourselves,” Ortis said. After a pause, he looked at Catelyn and
added “Even longer if you do as I asked.”
Catelyn looked at the man in return, and for the first time,
she noticed that Ortis had stopped shaving, because his head was
snowy along the sides, and his face was covered in a stubble of
fine, white whiskers. Either he had realized that it was pointless,
just another way for Uriel to exert his power over everyone, or he
was truly unconcerned, and was simply waiting to die by her hand.
Catelyn couldn’t look at the man, and turned away. She didn’t
want to deal with the man’s request just now, although she could
tell from the look in his eyes that she wouldn’t be able to avoid it
altogether.
He seemed adamant, and Catelyn wasn’t in the frame of
mind to argue with him at that moment. She changed the subject
back to her own situation.
“We need to work out how we’re going to get through
Belkyn and open the Grand Gate.”
Ortis glowered at her, and left the room.
Catelyn looked down at her feet, feeling anger at the man.
What did he expect?
she thought.
That I would simply
pull a knife and cut his throat here and now?
“Catelyn, give the man some time. He’s...dealing with a
lot.”
Catelyn turned on her friend, directing her anger at Silena
now.
“Are you defending him now? Just whispers ago, I heard
you raking him over the coals yourself! I know he was
instrumental in getting us out. And I am grateful to him for that.
But that cannot forgive a lifetime of evil. He’s a monster! Or have
you forgotten?”
Silena stood her ground and crossed the room to stand in
front of Catelyn.
“I know you’re angry, but don’t you ever suggest that I
could forget what that man did to me and my family.” The look in
Silena’s eyes, her pain, shamed Catelyn that she had said such
words in the heat of her anger.
“I’m sorry, Silena.”
Silena reached out, placed a hand on Catelyn’s shoulder
and smiled.
“We’ve all been through an ordeal. And of course, it’s not
easy to adjust to the reality of our new circumstances. No, I haven’t
forgotten what happened to my family, but I also can never forget
what Ortis did for my family now. He saved you. Those acts
haven’t earned his forgiveness but it has earned him time from me.
And we’ll need his help if we’re going to leave the Seat behind.”
“We?” Catelyn asked, surprised.
“You don’t think I could live the rest of my days a victim of
the Emperor’s petty vendetta, do you?”
“I guess not, I just...it’s not going to be easy, and—”
Silena laughed out loud, interrupting Catelyn.
“By the Divines, Catelyn. It couldn’t possibly be harder
than trying to stay here, hiding from the Imperials and waiting for
them to take what little I have left. Besides, I owe it to the girls to
try and offer them a better life.”