Priest (Ratcatchers Book 1) (3 page)

The jail was one of several small, squat buildings scattered throughout the city. It wasn’t designed for much but holding murderous, thieving bastards long enough for the King’s magistrates to figure out what to do with them.

Three levels extended down, most of them empty most of the time. The girl was in a cell on the second floor, the only occupied cell down there. She was there, Heden knew, because she wouldn’t disturb the prisoners on the first floor with her raving.

Heden and Domnal arrived outside the small door. While Domnal unlocked the door and opened it, Heden thought he detected a little fear from the man. Domnal was normally fearless. But madness, possession, loss of identity did scare him, Heden knew.

“Come get me when you’re done,” Domnal said, turning to leave. “I’ll send someone down to clear her out.” He stopped and looked with a mixture of gratitude and pity at his friend, about to discharge a terrible duty, and held out his hand. “Thanks again,” Dom said.

Heden took his hand, but couldn’t look Domnal in the eye. “Won’t take long,” he said.

Dom nodded, turned, and walked off into the darkness. Heden, torch in one hand, looked into the cell but out of the corner of his eye monitored the slow retreat of Domnal’s light. The light eventually winked out and Heden was alone.

He stepped into the cell. It was ten feet deep, but only four feet wide. The roof was low but low ceilings had never been a problem for Heden. The cell walls and floor were dark, ruddy clay. There was a cot about a foot off the floor. The door behind him had a small metal plate that could be opened and closed only from the outside, allowing the guards to feed the prisoner. There was a bowl of food on the floor, tipped over, and a bowl of water still intact.

In Heden’s estimation the girl was maybe fourteen. She was in the far corner of the cell, on the ground, looking as though she’d crawled there in an attempt to put as much of her body as far away from the door as possible.

She was gibbering. She’d soiled herself, and her mouth was bleeding. Her eyes were rolling around in her head. For a moment, Heden saw the mad eye of the Eseldic from upstairs.

Heden was relieved. She was in the middle of a fit, which meant she’d be easier to deal with than the last one.

Ensconcing his torch, he walked over to the cot. The girl had left a streak of vomit and blood on the ground. Heden sat on the cot, and unlaced the pouch he’d tied to his belt.

He extracted from the small leather pouch what looked like a ball of green pipe tobacco. It glistened in the guttering torchlight. He pulled a small leather strap out from his waist, and said a short prayer.

As he prepared, he spoke to the girl. Nothing in particular, in soothing tones. He knew she wouldn’t respond to him, but he thought maybe part of her could hear him. He bent down and began his experiment. He felt like a thief. Like he was stealing something from someone.

The girl seized up, flailing around in spasms. Her long, brown hair was matted on her face and her thin, gangly arms and legs were bruised. She was wearing a short wool shift, courtesy of the jail. Her face was gaunt. Her dark eyes jerked in their sockets, looking at nothing.

Heden grabbed her arm. She didn’t resist. She didn’t stop her thrashing, but she didn’t actively fight him.

He pulled her toward him and, sitting on the floor next to her, tried to get her back toward him, so he could put her head in his arms and feed her the herbs he’d brought.

She was slick with blood and sweat and in one great spasm she rolled away from him, hitting him in the nose with her elbow. Heden grunted, and scrabbled after her. Talking to her, or himself, the entire time.

He eventually got her head in his lap, her arms and legs not close enough to the walls to get much leverage. He brought the leather strap out, folded it once, and forced it into her mouth. She tried to bite around it and seemed at one point as though she might gag on it, but Heden was careful. He wedged the leather in between her upper and lower teeth on the left side of her mouth, preventing her from closing. Her eyes still danced wildly, seeing everything and nothing. It looked like mortal terror.

He took out the ball of green herbs, moistened, preserved, and held together with honey, pinched it in half and pushed half of it between her upper cheek and gum, then quickly did the same with the other half, and the lower jaw.

He quickly removed the strap. Taking care to make sure she didn’t bite down on her tongue, he closed her mouth and tied the leather strap around her head, under her chin, keeping it closed. Her nostrils flared as she sucked air in through her nose.

The medicine in the herbs would slowly dissolve into her mouth. It wouldn’t work if she swallowed it, Heden had read. He wasn’t entirely sure it would work at all.

Before she could choke, or swallow her tongue, Heden said a quick prayer and she was asleep. Her whole body relaxed, her eyes closed, and it felt to Heden as though her weight on his legs was suddenly lighter.

Heden looked around the room, at the mess, the aftermath of struggle, and thought;
I should have said the prayer first
.

Taking care not to injure her, he got up and put the girl on the cot and fetched the bowl of water. Dipping his cloak in the water, he spent several minutes cleaning off her face, arms and legs. Careful not to aggravate the cuts and scratches covering her body. He used his fingers to brush her matted hair out of her eyes, then shrugged and stopped.
Good enough
, he thought.

He closed his eyes and said another prayer over her. A more potent version of the one he said for Domnal. Her wounds closed, her bruises melted from blue-back to a wan kind of yellow and, for the second time in two hours, his eyes snapped open at what the prayer revealed to him. The disease, the precise flavor it left in his mind. A flavor he’d tasted less than a turn ago.

He narrowed his eyes and looked out the door, into the darkness where Domnal had retreated.

“That fucker,” he said, to no one in particular.

“Heden, I said I’d…” Domnal stopped. All the guards in the main room stopped to look at him.

Heden was carrying the young girl, asleep, in his arms. She felt almost weightless to him. They saw the leather strap he put around her head. They didn’t know what it signified, but they knew something had not gone according to plan, and Domnal was upset.

Domnal scowled. “Is she
alive
?”

Half of the Eseldics had been processed and assigned cells. The rest were still here, manacled and gagged. Someone had cleaned up the bodies. All the guards stood around tensely looking from Domnal to Heden. All except Teagan who leaned on one of the heavy wooden beams holding the roof up, his long legs crossed at the ankles. Teagan didn’t seem to be looking at anything.

Heden stared at Domnal. Domnal’s pained face betrayed his understanding of what Heden had discovered.

“Heden, I can’t…you know what the church said. You can’t take her out of here!”

“I’m taking her out of here,” Heden said.

Domnal ran his thick fingers across his jowls. He was unsure of what to do.

Heden began to walk out, which meant walking at Domnal. Heden didn’t look at him.

“I don’t care what you tell the church,” Heden said, walking past the guards. They looked to Domnal, wondering if he would order them to stop Heden. “Tell them you saw me carry the body out myself. Be as vague as you want. I don’t care what you tell them.”

Domnal, upset but unable to bring himself to do anything about it, stepped out of the way.

“I don’t care what you tell Megan either,” Heden said after he’d passed Domnal.

He stopped at the door and threw a look at the guard next to it. The older man realized what Heden wanted, and rushed to open the door for him, letting Heden out into the new day.

Domnal wiped his hand over his forehead and into his hair. “Shit,” he said. The other guards watched him, uncomprehending.

Teagan just smiled and shook his head.

She woke up in an expensive feather bed and for a moment thought she was back at the Rose Petal. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she realized this was not the case.

The room was small and appeared to be a room at an inn. It was long and narrow; there was a large chest and a bureau for clothes. An expensive full-length mirror told her much about the quality of the inn. Most had no mirrors.

She was upstairs. She could tell because the roof slanted down directly over her, and there was a kind of skylight in it. Grayish-white light filled the room. It was overcast outside. She sensed it was morning.

There was a noise, and she realized there was a man in the room with her. His back was to her. He took clothes from a pile on a chair, folded them, and put them in the bureau. They were not her clothes.

The man didn’t seem aware she was awake. He seemed of shorter than average height, but gave the impression of being fit. Well-muscled. His skin was pale. He had short black hair and seemed to be in his forties. She couldn’t see his face.

She knew what was expected, however. Though utterly exhausted, her mind wasn’t tired. She sat up and adjusted her hair.

“So, do you want me to…uh…” she stopped when the man turned and look at her.

He had a dress folded in one hand. His clothes, an unstylish but practical combination of leather and wool, ill fit him. His face was hard; it looked chiseled out of granite. There were deep lines in it. While old and weathered, there was something handsome about him.

The look he gave her was a kind of appraisal. She found herself unable to read him, and this bothered her. He betrayed no purpose or intent, no desire. She could tell neither what he was thinking, nor what he wanted, and this made her shiver.

The feeling passed, and left her vulnerable. She felt like she was nine again. She found herself pulling the sheets up to her chin without realizing it.

He opened his mouth to speak and she couldn’t shake a strange sense of being threatened. There was something about him that scared her.

She startled when, without warning, a large and very heavy black cat appeared on the bed. It had jumped up from the floor without a sound. The cat’s presence interrupted the man before he could talk.

The cat walked right up to her without making eye contact, stood on her stomach and when she reached out, it pushed its head into her hand as though it had known her all its life. It was black with bright yellow eyes and seemed made of muscle.

She liked cats. Most inns had them, to keep the mice and rats down. Some used small dogs. But she was surprised that this man kept a cat for any reason.

The man opened the door and, without saying anything, walked out, leaving the way open to the hall beyond.

Petting the cat, she looked around the room, wondering where she was and what, if anything, she should do. Run for it? Her instincts told her this was not necessary.

She was in a nightshift, but it was not her own. She pulled back the covers and looked at it. It was expensive. But it meant…

The man came back in, carrying a tray with hot food on it. She was starving, she realized. But she was more angry than hungry.

“Where are my clothes?” She tried being demanding.

Heden looked around.

“I…don’t know,” he said. His voice sounded dark and rough. Hearing him speak, she felt awkward. She was alone in a strange man’s room and he was not a potential customer. He reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what. She felt very small.

“I threw out the shift the guards put you in. I didn’t think to ask what they’d done with your clothes.”

“The guards?” she asked, frowning.

Heden put the food down on a table. “This is for you,” he said. “You’re going to be hungry. Eat as much as you want.”

“Did you dress me in this?” she asked, indicating her nightshift. The cat purred and tried to position itself to get petted again. She pushed the cat off the bed, but it jumped back on making a little trill, walked to the end of the bed, and curled up.

Heden looked at her and then at the food, then back at her. He sighed, picked up the clothes he’d placed on the chair, and sat down. “I gave you a bath, cleaned you, and dressed you.”

None of this made sense to her. She was confused and getting scared and this made her angry. She wanted to get back to the Rose Petal, and the safety of an existence she knew.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Heden.”

She shook her head once. “I mean what…”

“When I found you, you’d been put in the jail. You were having a fit.”

She stared at him, mouth slack. Her skin began to crawl and she understood what he meant. Discovering she couldn’t remember the past few days, her chest began to tighten up. Her eyes started to turn red and her cheeks flushed.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“What?”

Heden got up, picked up a bowl of soup and a spoon, and approached her. She flinched away but he just stood there, proffering the soup.

There was a smell about him. He didn’t wear perfume as many men she knew did, but he smelled…good. Smelled like leather and wood, metal and oil. It was an earthy smell and though it was not familiar to her, it gave her comfort.

She took the bowl of soup and the spoon and began to eat. This seemed to satisfy the man, and he went back and sat down.

“I’m going to tell you something,” he began, but she wasn’t really listening. She was thinking about what he just said. She’d been having a fit. The last one she remembered lasted almost a whole day. She had wondered what Miss Elowen would do, knew she’d have to do something eventually. Cold realization struck.
She put me in jail is what she did.

“I gave you some medicine,” the stranger said. It was a term she’d heard but was unfamiliar with. “I gave you something to eat. And you slept for a long time. All through yesterday. But now, I think, you’re better.”

She continued to work on the soup. It was good, and she felt life and normality returning.

“I don’t think you’ll have any more fits,” he said.

Light dawned.

“You’re a priest,” she said. She didn’t know exactly what he was talking about, or what had happened while she was having her fit, but she got the gist of it and now all his behavior made sense.

Heden pulled a silver medallion out from under his shirt. She couldn’t see the sigil on it, but recognized it as a saint’s talisman. She narrowed her eyes. He didn’t look like any priest she’d ever seen. Nor act like one. But there was something about his attitude toward her that only made sense if she thought ‘priest.’

He knew she hadn’t been listening to him. He already knew her story. He adjusted his guess of her age up by a year. He concluded she was fifteen and went to work at the Rose Petal when she was thirteen. It wasn’t unusual.

“What’s your name?” he asked again.

She looked at him with big, dark eyes. “Violet,” she said.

Heden nodded. “What’s your real name?”

She just stared at him, the near-empty bowl of soup cooling in her hands, and heard herself say “Vanora.” There were not many people left who knew her real name.

He smiled. “That’s a pretty name. But I can call you Violet if it helps.”

“What…” she said, and to her ears she sounded small and girlish. She cleared her throat. “What do I owe for the room?”

“Nothing,” Heden said. “This is my inn.”

“This is your inn?”

Heden nodded.

“You own a whole inn?”

Heden shrugged.

She nodded, eyes wide, and looked around again. She looked at the cat curled up at the foot of your bed.

“That’s your cat?” she asked.

“Her name’s Ballisantirax.”

She lowered her head and gave him a look from under her eyebrows. “You don’t seem like someone who’d like cats,” she said.

Heden shrugged. “I like this cat.”

She nodded again. She’d known this person less than a turn, but his response seemed entirely typical.

He stood up.

“There’s bread and cheese,” he said, indicating the plate. “And milk. Fresh. Vegetables and fruit. Try to eat them in equal measure. If you feel sleepy, go back to sleep. Balli will watch you. There’s a chamber pot under your bed, and a bath down the hall. Use either at your convenience. I’ll be back up here in an hour to clear everything away.”

She looked up at him with something like a sense of wonder. He looked back at her, and she realized he had blue eyes. He seemed to make some sort of judgment about her, took a quick inventory of the room, pursed his lips and nodded to himself, turned and walked out of the room, closing the door. She did not hear him lock it.