Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (47 page)

His life before meeting her had been a series of certainties,
one after another. Uriel had always provided that kind of clarity to
him. He’d been the bedrock upon which Ortis had based much of
his life, much of his own self. And then he’d met her and
everything had changed.

From that night, he felt like a moth drawn to a flame,
unable and unwilling to stop his own obliteration. He hadn’t
known it that first night, what her purpose was to him, but it had
all become clear to him in the marketplace. When he’d stood there,
engulfed in her presence, everything had fallen into place. He had
known then, that she was to be his end. His release from this life.

He didn’t know how or why he knew this, nor did he
question its origin, he only knew that it was truth. After a lifetime
of living for the Will of another, he had finally found his own.

The warehouse appeared empty upon entering through
the side door, but he knew better. He had a strong sense of her
presence. Catelyn was here. His eyes drifted upward to the ceiling,
where he knew she would be. Like a bird, she seemed much more
comfortable above the ground than on it. He spotted her pack,
lying on copper scaffolding that had turned green with age, but she
was not there. Another whisper passed, with him scanning the
remaining rafters, until he spotted her small, dirt-covered feet
dangling from one of the beams.

“Catelyn,” he called up softly. He knew that he wouldn’t
need to shout; he had witnessed firsthand the strength of her
senses, feats which reminded him, in a way, of Uriel. The girl
didn’t respond. He walked to the ladder and climbed up to the
metal scaffold, his booted feet clanking noisily on the metal
walkway.

“Don’t come any closer,” the girl called out to him, and he
could hear the pain in her voice. He didn’t know why, but her
sorrow pulled at him, and he ached to comfort her. But he ignored
that impulse and did as she commanded and stood his ground.

Whispers passed, and finally she pulled her feet up and
stood up on the rafters, and he could see her looking down at him.
Her face was dirt-covered, with the exception of two clear tracks
streaking her cheeks from her eyes, indicating that she had been
crying for some time. Again, Ortis felt a stab of compassion, a
feeling he was no longer completely uncomfortable with, even if he
couldn’t understand its origin.

For answer, Catelyn held up the dagger he had given her
days before, for protection on their journey, additionally so that
she could fulfill her part of their agreement. He could see fresh
blood dripping off of the blade, and his heart leapt into his
stomach. He reached out and gripped the copper railing in his
hands.

She showed him by turning her other hand so that he
could see the cut marks she had made along her lower arm.
“What have you done?” he asked.
“I…” she started to say, then trailed off, and balanced

“What. Have. You. Done?” he repeated, letting some of his
anger show.
He could see her blood dripping down her hand and onto
the filthy warehouse floor.
“I had a dream,” she began. “I remembered something.
Something important from when I was younger. From the day I
lost my family. When I lost my sight.”
Ortis felt a buzzing begin in his mind, as though
something lived behind his eyes, beneath his skin.
Something...something was not right.
Catelyn looked directly into his eyes, her glowing green
gaze piercing him with its intensity, and rooting him to the spot
where he stood. The girl continued recounting her dream.
“After my family was brutally murdered, I was alone. I
don’t know for how long. Alone, as my parent’s bodies turned cold,
as the bloodfire which stole my vision worked its way across my
face, and one of the evil men who had come to kill my parents and
steal me from them suffered an agonizing death.”
The buzzing grew louder, and Ortis felt sweat beginning to
pool between his shoulder blades. His upper lip quivered. He felt
his grip on the metal railing tighten until his hands hurt.
“After some number of prayers, finally some Imperial
soldiers arrived. I didn’t know what to expect, truthfully. A quick
death, most likely. Or perhaps to be taken to an orphanage, or to
even to a slavemaster to be sold as manual labor or worse.”
Ortis could hardly hear Catelyn’s words now as the
buzzing in his ears took hold of him. He released the metal railing
and brought his hands to his ears, trying to block out the noise, but
it was useless...the buzzing was inside his head. And he could still
hear Catelyn’s words as she told the rest of the story.
“But no, on this day, the worst of my life, there was no
mercy to be had. Instead, an Imperial officer...and I now know
who that officer was...left me there to die. Alone. Like a piece of
trash.”
The buzzing grew louder and louder until everything else
in Ortis’ world fell away, and the memory came flooding back.

Ortis sat looking at the reports of the central district’s
dispatches, trying to remain awake. Every sojourn at this time,
Uriel sent him on these inspection tours of the various Imperial
outposts, and every sojourn, Ortis grew so tired of the
bureaucratic mess that he often thumbed through the reports
without even bothering to read them. The entire process was just
a formality.

Ortis knew that the sole purpose of these tours was to
provide the local constabularies with the knowledge that the
Emperor was watching, and to deter sloppiness and negligence.
Ortis disagreed with the Emperor on this particular point. Fear
was enough to keep the locals in line. Ortis had personally
witnessed this for sojourns, and told him this, yet Uriel still
insisted that he be the face of these oversight efforts.

Ortis was reading through the detailed case file of an
altercation over a crate of produce being delivered to the wrong
merchant, when an Imperial soldier bounded into the room.
Gilliam was his name. Ortis made a point of learning every
soldier’s name, at least the ones he dealt with directly. It helped
inspire loyalty if the men under your command believed you
cared about them as individuals. It was all a farce of course; they
were as expendable to him as a sturdy pair of boots, and like
boots, they were only as reliable as your upkeep.

“What is it, Gilliam” Ortis barked, putting the sheaf of
papers down on the desk.
The young man Gilliam, with a face like malformed iron
and a number of blackened teeth, stopped and snapped him a
rigid salute.
“Highness, we’ve received an eyewit-”
Ortis cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“It’s not Highness, Gilliam. I’m no royal. Address me as
General or Ortis.”
Gilliam’s face reddened.
“Your pardon, General. We’ve received eyewitness, or
rather ear witness reports that there has been some kind of
altercation involving multiple citizens in the sixty-third
quadrant.”
Ortis sighed.
“What kind of altercation?” he asked tiredly.
“It’s unclear, General. But the witness said she’d never
heard screams like that before in her life.”
Ortis paused to consider the man. He had half a mind to
tell the incompetent young man to handle it himself. What bother
was it to him?
But as he looked at the desk, filled with papers, he
decided that perhaps a break was overdue. “Gilliam, grab two
men, and we’ll go check it out.”
As he stood, Gilliam snapped another salute and ran for
the doorway. Ortis picked up and wrapped his sword belt around
his waist. He strode out of the office and down the steps to the
hallway, and then out into the courtyard of the constabulary. He
waited a whisper until Gilliam returned with two of the other
soldiers. Rathburn. And Millerd. Strong, capable men. He had
watched them train earlier that span. Maybe Gilliam was
smarter than he looked.
He signaled for the men to move out, and they sprinted
ahead.
It was a four block march to the scene of the altercation.
The building was nondescript, like every other housing unit in the
Seat. The three men walked, with swords drawn, into the
building ahead of Ortis, and he followed up two flights of stairs.
As he reached the threshold of the unit where the altercation had
taken place, he heard Millerd’s voice.
“What a mess.”
Ortis approached and stood in the doorway, taking in the
scene. On the ground, two bodies, a man and a woman, lay
closely together with their guts spilled across the floor. Nearby,
another man with a sword rammed through his middle lay face
up, his lifeless eyes already providing nourishment for flies.
Further away, a third man lay with his face almost completely
eaten away by something, and yet somehow he was still alive
and twitching. Even Ortis felt a twinge at the sight.
Finally, in the center of it all, a young child crying
quietly, her face ruined and her eyes a patchwork of melted flesh.
A girl, thought Ortis. Damaged. Weak. He discounted her as soon
as he noticed her.
“Divines, what…” Gilliam said, and then he stumbled to
the corner of the room and vomited.
“Ugh. Bloodfire. I’ve seen this before. Nasty stuff from the
Before,” Rathburn said.
“Yeah, that stuff eats right through anything,” Millerd
offered. “Look, you can see right through to his brain an’ all.”
That comment sent Gilliam into another round of sicking
up. Millerd and Rathburn were correct, though. He too had seen
the effects of Bloodfire firsthand. Or rather, what Bloodfire could
become. He thought of the Emperor’s naked torso, criss-crossed
in beautiful, undulating scars.
“Enough,” Ortis said. “We’re here to investigate.”
He drew his sword, stepped over to the dying man, and
placed it point first directly through the man’s chest into his
heart. The man gave one last sputtering breath from one of the
orifices in his melted face, and then expired.
“That was a mercy,” Rathburn commented, looking at
Ortis.
“That was convenience” he replied, annoyed.
“No skin off my bones,” Rathburn returned, shrugging
his shoulders and turning away.
Ortis waved to the three men, and they made their way
around the room, conducting their investigation. Gilliam walked
to the kitchen, looking for valuables, opening and closing
drawers and looking through cupboards. Rathburn and Millerd
took to dragging the bodies away to the corner of the room.
Then Ortis heard the young girl cough.
Gilliam stopped his rummaging to look at the girl, then
look up at Ortis. Ortis simply shook his head, and Gilliam
resumed his searching.
“Can you...help?” the girl said quietly, her voice
quavering.
Ortis ignored the comment, as did his men. There was
nothing to be done. They all knew. The girl would be the fifth
victim of this altercation today. The men signaled to Ortis that
they had completed their tasks. He nodded.
“Alright. You three, take the bodies and report in. I’ll be
right there. I’ve just got to take care of this last thing,” he said,
nodding at the girl.
“Sir,” all of the men responded.
Gilliam, Rathburn and Millerd each walked to one of the
bodies, hefted them onto a shoulder, and made their way out of
the living unit, and down the stairs to the street. Ortis remained
behind, with the body of the disemboweled woman.
“Please, don’t take my family…”the girl said, and then she
collapsed to her knees sobbing uncontrollably, no tears able to
form on the ruins of her doll-like face.
Ortis finally looked at the girl for more than a breath,
and closer at where she had been marked by the bloodfire. It had
taken her eyes, and most of the upper part of her face, but she
had somehow survived her injuries. The worst had already been
done, it seemed. Especially if what Uriel had told him of Bloodfire
was even half true.
Ortis walked toward the girl and the woman’s body,
which he could safely assume was the young girl’s mother and
readied his sword to cut the girl’s throat. As he moved closer,
something about the mother, lying lifeless on the floor, caught his
attention. He stopped, looking down at the woman’s still, bloodstained face.
Her dead green eyes stared up at him, and he felt his
bowels turn to water.
Sera.
Sera, the prostitute, one of tens of women who had been
sent to service his men for sojourns. Who he himself had
experienced a number of times. Who, among all of the whores
who had been employed in such service, he had taken note of
because of her tenderness, even in the face of the horrors she was
forced to endure in the camps day after day. Ortis felt his hands
begin to sweat in his gauntlets, the sword feeling like a lead
weight in his grip. He looked down now at the girl, and saw that
same mouth, those same hands.
He felt something unusual then. Mercy. And his task
grew less clear.
“Please…” the girl said.
Ortis felt conflicting desires within himself as he looked
down at the helpless girl. In one breath, he nearly cleaved her
head from her shoulders, and in the other, he wished to take this
girl away from this place, and give her just a tenth of the
kindness that her mother had shown to him and his men. But he
closed himself off from those feelings, and drew himself up with
his inner strength, given to him to serve the Empire.
Finally, he reached out and cupped her chin, turning her
face up to look at him, if she still had eyes. Her face winced at the
pain of that movement, and he looked at the whorled scarring
across her cheeks and eyes, again reminding him of the
Emperor’s body. Thoughts of Uriel brought his mind back to the
task at hand. He decided on his course of action, and laid it out
for her so that she could understand.
“Bloodfire took your eyes, girl. But you probably already
know that. And you’ll never make a living servicing my men
looking like that. You’re useless now,” he said. He wasn’t sure
why he’d made the comment about her servicing her men, except
perhaps that he wanted to say something to honor the memory of
the girl’s mother, somehow.
He let his hand fall away from her chin and she visibly
sagged. He grabbed the girl under the arms and pulled her to her
feet, which were bare. There too, he saw the resemblance to the
mother. He knelt down before her, placed his gauntleted hand on
her shoulder, gripping it tightly and imparting his final words
for her, hoping that they might inspire her to survive. To find the
courage of her mother. To go on, and to become
something...different. He felt that he owed her that much.
“I believe in the Empire. This isn’t a fatal wound. If you
are strong enough, you will live and become something hard, and
cold. You will become a benefit to the Empire. If you are not, then
you will die and the Empire will be stronger for it.”
He released her shoulder and strode over to Sera’s body.
He tenderly lifted her body, placed it on his shoulder, and walked
from the room and down the stairs. His men were already
loading the other bodies on a wagon they had conscripted from
nearby for their needs. Ortis made sure to wipe away the tear
that had fallen from his right eye before he had fully descended
from the second floor.
Stepping out, he looked up at the building, and wondered
whether the girl would live or die. He piled Sera’s body onto the
wagon, and spoke softly to the corpse, his gauntleted hand
resting on her cold thigh. He recalled, with suppressed longing,
how it had once felt when it had been warm, and soft, beneath his
bare hands.
“For your sake, I hope she lives.”
He ordered his men to march ahead, and the four of them
returned to the constabulary to burn the bodies and file their
report. Ortis forgot all about the girl by the time they had
returned to the courtyard.