Bloodfire (The Sojourns of Rebirth) (7 page)

In her mind’s eye, she imagined herself standing as though
she were in the middle of a bubble, and whatever was inside that
bubble with her was known to her. With that in mind, she tuned
her hearing to listen for just a breath, and within that bubble, she
believed that she could determine precisely where the three rats
were.
She turned her body towards where Bossy seemed to be in
her bubble, and she heard his squeals of protest and she smiled,
then threw the chip of roof tile.
The roof tile was not aimed well, and Catelyn heard it
clatter onto the floor near where she had believed Bossy to be and
in her mind she saw the rings of sound it made as the impacts rang
off the surfaces of the attic, just missing him. She heard him
squeak in offense at this new attack, then she heard him scrabble
away towards the hole in the floorboard, and squeeze himself
through, his cries receding into the distance until he was no longer
within her bubble of awareness. She felt a rush of exhilaration at
her success, and she focused on the next two rats as she swapped
another chip of tile from left hand to right.
The next two throws were more accurate. She actually hit
Whiny with a well placed chip, and he screamed at this direct
attack, but immediately scrambled away to the hole to follow his
friend. When she threw at Chirpy, he was already moving to exit
the attic, clearly seeing that the odds had shifted out of the rats’
favor. And then, she was alone.
Once the rats were gone, Catelyn stood and breathed
slowly. The only sounds she could hear were her own. Her breath,
her heart beat. She turned down her senses and the bubble faded
into the background again leaving her in darkness and ignorance
again. In a panic, she tuned into her senses again and felt the
bubble reform.
Just like before, she felt herself at the center of her senses,
and although there was no more screeching of angry rodents, she
could hear other sounds now that she hadn’t even known were
there. The chirping of some insect under the floorboards, the everpresent shifting and settling of the building, even the dull buzz of
the steam pipes under the building and in the alley nearby.
She smelled beyond the mold and mildew and detected the
faint odors of tobacco and the rotting rind of a citrus fruit.
She didn’t try to taste anything deeper in the air, for fear of
what might be there.
As she explored each of her senses in turn, she began to
understand that she could see the world in her mind’s eye.
And she realized that there had been more than just
awareness in that bubble.
There had been freedom.
She wanted to continue to explore this new feeling, this
amazing gift from the Divines, for that is truly what it must be, but
her body was exhausted and she needed to take full advantage of
the quiet to grab sleep while she could. She stepped lightly over to
the corner where she slept, curled up on the floor, and passed out
with a smile on her face.
She woke the next day, and when she heard the
commotion of sound echoing down the street indicating that the
merchants were setting up their stalls, she returned to the market
plaza. Catelyn had shaken like a leaf every time she heard someone
approach her, but perhaps because of her scars and her damaged
eyes no doubt giving her a wretched appearance, a handful of
citizens took pity on her and she earned enough coin and food in
those first days that she didn’t starve.
Standing there for days gave Catelyn time to think, and
despite her initial good fortune, she knew that she would need to
do something besides beg if she was going to do more than simply
survive. She also knew that every day she dallied in the market
plaza was another opportunity for someone to prey upon her.
Children in the Seat were highly prized for a variety of reasons,
and Catelyn knew that she wouldn’t be able to stay on the streets
long without attracting the wrong kind of attention.
Catelyn’s parents had warned her about the many
perversions of human desire, and what that could mean for a child
alone on the streets. Even if none of that was a factor, begging
relied on charity, which was in short supply in a place like the Seat,
despite her early success. Eventually, the novelty of her
appearance would fade, and she would become just as invisible as
the rest of the beggars. And so Catelyn’s first days of begging alone
on the streets only lasted that long on her own.
Scavenging became Catelyn’s second attempt at survival,
and after the first span of begging, instead of going to the market
plaza, she would roam the streets and alleys, smelling for trash
heaps or other refuse left behind by others, and growing more
confident in her steps and moving around without the use of her
sight. But with the amount of crime and poverty in the Seat, it had
become the default life path of every failed citizen in the city,
leading to rampant and violent competition over the scraps of
others.
Two near confrontations with a pair of scavengers
threatening her if she showed her face near them or their territory
again had shown Catelyn that if she was going to survive, she
would need to find a way to do so invisibly. To take what she
needed without anyone being the wiser.
This, like everything about her life now, was easier said
than done.

The day after mysteriously distributing her parcels of food
to the residents of the Seat who lived in the tenements and
apartments near her, Catelyn found herself once again lounging
upon the smooth clay tiles of a roof, trying not to let the heat
overwhelm her, and listening to the hollow echoes of the empty
priory below her bouncing up through the metal venting.

The priory, or the Priory of the Divines if you were being
reverent or official, was not a temple of worship, like what Catelyn
had read about in the books from the Before, but a place where
people came to offer their supplications, and to whisper their sins,
to the Divines. As with all other things, the Empire tightly
controlled people’s access to their Creators. They were allowed to
beseech Them, but they were not allowed to worship Them.

People were granted one day each span to make offerings
in recompense for their transgressions, and to confess their sins to
one of the priors who would then assign penance to be completed
in the Eyes of the Divines, or in other words, in front of the entire
congregation during the service of supplication. The sins were
private, the penance was quite public.

The priory was not open for such services yet, but
confessions were due to begin within the next prayer.
Catelyn didn’t come to the priory for any such desires, she
had simply found that many people came to the priory
confessional expecting a private conversation between themselves
and the eunuchs who staffed the priory. Catelyn’s exploration of
the roofs of the building had revealed the vents which allowed the
wafting incense that the priors kept burning during services to
leave the building, and to her delight she discovered that they also
carried sound quite effectively.
Many a secret stash or ill-gotten fortune had been
confessed to the priors this way, and Catelyn had been able to use
this information to supplement her income and reduce her risks
quite nicely since finding it.
She was lying there, relaxed and expecting at least half a
prayer’s worth of silence before the eunuch’s opened the doors to
the public when the sound of the door banging open wafted up to
her ears from below, followed by two pairs of footsteps and
muffled yelling.
She turned her head, rolled over onto her hands and knees
and put an ear to the vent. As she did so, the voices rang out
clearly, as though she were standing two paces away from them.
“Damn you, Eyrris. What do you want for it?”
The first voice belonged to a man, although the voice was
lilted in a way that Catelyn automatically associated with the
eunuchs who staffed the priory. She didn’t know the priors by
name, but she was certain she’d heard this man’s voice before
giving penance and intoning the supplications to the Divines.
“Pater, there’s nothing that you have which I could want.”
Prior Pater had used his name, but at hearing the voice
with her own ears, she confirmed that the second voice was
unmistakably the booming deep tone of Dane Eyrris.
Since Catelyn had made the decision to take up the life she
now led, six sojourns ago, she had made a point to get to know
every one of the so-called “nobles” that commanded the favor of
the Emperor. Dane Eyrris was one such “nobleman”. He belonged
to a cult of deplorable individuals who dubbed themselves the
Sado Sexual Elite. Dane was not a name, but a title that each of the
members carried to set themselves apart from their inferiors. That
the Emperor allowed such a group to exist, and to claim a title,
spoke of their lofty place in Imperial society. As Pater the prior
continued, she imagined that she could almost hear his frustrated
gesticulations.
“But, be reasonable, Dane. What use have you for
such...trifles?” This last word, and the way in which it was said,
with such strange mystery and desire, sparked something which
whetted Catelyn’s appetite and she felt herself press closer to the
metal vent to ensure that she wouldn’t miss a single word.
“I have certain friends, you ball-less freak. And those
friends have certain tastes. I’m sure I could interest them and get
something that would please me in return,” Eyrris spat out
dismissively.
Catelyn could tell from the way that he spoke that Eyrris
was relishing the desperation in the eunuch Pater’s demands. The
men who called themselves the Sado Sexual Elite were not named
casually. Clearly this was a man who genuinely enjoyed his petty
cruelties.
“Eyrris, listen to reason. Such artifacts are property of the
Empire. They belong to Him,” Pater said, then lowered his voice to
a conspiratorial whisper.
“If the Emperor were to find out...”
Silence followed, as he let that thought linger, but it didn’t
last long, as a ringing slap rang its way up through the metal pipe
shortly thereafter. Catelyn winced at the sound; it had to have been
a brutal strike.
“Don’t you EVER threaten me, worm! Do you think having
your balls chopped off is the worst that can be done to you? Do
you?!” Dane Eyrris raged.
Catelyn heard a commotion, as of someone scrambling
away on hands and knees, and Pater whimpering in pain and fear.
“Eyrris, stop! Please! It wasn’t a threat. I would never turn
you in. You know that! I would be held just as culpable as you, just
for even speaking to someone like you. But you must understand.
This...this is of the Before, at the very latest. This is...it’s priceless.”
“Fool! Do you think I’m addled? Of course I know what it
is! And what the price is for possessing it. From your ridiculous
offer, it’s clear that you’re the one who’s not aware.”
“Eyrris, I beg you. The priory can...”
Eyrris interrupted the other man with another blow. It
sounded heavier, like a kick, but the echoing of the sound as it
traveled up from below made it hard to tell. Like the first blow, she
could tell Eyrris was not holding back.
“Pater, I want you to know something.”
Catelyn heard what sounded like choking gasps from the
prior, and Catelyn wasn’t sure whether Eyrris was choking the
man with his hands, or standing or kneeling on the eunuch’s
throat.
“I want you to know that your pathetic mewling and
begging is exactly why the priory will never get their hands
on...this.”
The pause seemed to indicate to Catelyn that whatever
they were talking about, Dane Eyrris had it on him right then.
“No, you woman, my friends from Aldus will be here in
two nights for the Eve celebrations. They will pay me anything I
ask, grant me anything I desire, for this relic. And I’ll finally be free
to set my own course, and get what I deserve.”
With that, the gasping stopped and she heard Pater begin
to sob, and Dane Eyrris simply laughed at the wretch and walked
away, the echoing footfalls growing fainter until she heard the door
slam again and then the plaintive sobbing of the fallen prior.
Catelyn stepped away from the metal vent and strode to
the edge of the priory roof, crouching down and focusing her
bubble to the street below. She picked out Dane Eyrris as he strode
away, and considered to herself what could possibly be worth
keeping secret from the Emperor himself. What would cause these
two men to quarrel so, to risk death or worse to protect such a
secret?
As Catelyn thought of the possibilities, she reached out for
the lucky ring she wore on one toe and twirled it idly with the
fingers of her left hand. Spinning it back and forth, it helped her to
concentrate, and she focused inwardly and came to a conclusion. If
the prior Pater and Dane Eyrris, both citizens of station who stood
wholly within the shadow of the Emperor himself, would risk
everything for something so valuable, yet small enough to carry
around on Dane Eyrris’ person, then there really was only one
choice for her.
Catelyn smiled, and easily made the decision to relieve
both men of their burden.

She shadowed Dane Eyrris back to his home after his
argument with the prior and stationed herself on the rooftop
across from his building, expanding her bubble to cover as much of
the area as possible. She heard him trudge up two flights of stairs,
to the top of a three story complex. She listened as he fumbled with
keys, something nearly unheard of in most places in the Seat, and
unlocked his apartment door.

She listened as he walked across the room, heard the
clinking of glass as he poured himself a drink, and then walk over
to one side of the room. She heard him put the glass down, and
then stand silently for several breaths.

Then he swore.
Catelyn was taken aback by the outburst, as he appeared
to be alone. Catelyn’s heart jumped into her throat and she ducked
down as low as she could.
Oh Divines, did he see me?
she thought in a panic.
She thought about how careless she might have been, and
what shortcuts she might have taken that she shouldn’t have
following someone so prominent in the Empire. For all she knew
he rated high enough to have his own Imperial detachment of
soldiers. The prize he was supposedly carrying had been quite a
temptation, and she wondered if the thought of its value had
gotten the best of her, but when she ran it over in her mind she
realized that no, she had in fact been as careful as ever, and she
didn’t see how he could have known that she was there.
But her question was answered by the Dane himself when
she heard the unmistakable sound of a belt being unbuckled and
dropping to the floor, and the subtle rustle of clothing as it fell
from his body. Then more silence, followed by a shifting
mechanism in the wall and a clicking noise, and finally a sliding
noise. At this distance her hearing was the most acute sense she
had but it was almost impossible to do much more than guess that
Dane Eyrris had somehow just activated a sliding panel in the wall
he was standing next to.
She heard him move toward it, heard a solid thunk as he
put something down, and then heard the panel sliding shut.
She was intensely focused on the mechanism, so when
Dane Eyrris muttered something under his breath, Catelyn almost
missed it, but it sounded to her as if he said:
“I’ve been enjoying myself too much.”
This comment seemed strange to Catelyn, and she was
even more confused when he then went on to say:
“Speaking of enjoying myself.”
The next sounds she heard made her face red with
embarrassment.