Solace & Grief (31 page)

Silent and unobserved, the cat-shaped creature currently known as Duchess guarded the house. Padding softly up the carpeted stairs, she lay belly-down on the landing and closed her eyes, sensing the ebb and flow of life in her strange charges. Brushing gently against minds, she felt the tides of thought and dream eddy against her consciousness, rippling like the surface of a deep pool into which a stone has fallen. Or been dropped.

Sighing a little, she reached out to those around her. The Bright One dreamed uneasily, her mind full of memories not her own, of lives she had never lived. Duchess felt some small sympathy at this. With unexpected fondness, she chased the dead away, feeling the girl relax into sleep. They would return the following night, as they always did: some cruel, some kind, some vivid, some faint, but almost all forgotten with the dawn. It was a pointless act to banish them; and yet, strangely, it felt right. A low rumble of purr quivered through her chest, and she flexed, briefly unsheathing her claws. Such follies should not matter.

Unperturbed, she recommenced her study of the humans. Well, if truth be told, they were not
exactly
human, but the distinction was so fine in most respects as not to merit being made. Or so Duchess believed.

Shadowfriend and Quickling stirred, each unconsciously seeking the other. Their bond went far into the past, tied to some hidden memory that stained both their hearts. Whatever it was had hurt, but although soothing it was well within her power, Duchess chose to let it be. In its own way, the wound gave strength, strength the Daughter would need in the coming days. Briefly, she lingered in the Warden's mind. Aptly enough, she found no trauma there, making him well suited to his purpose. The discovery came as no surprise, but was satisfying all the same.
He will keep them safe.

The Starkine was a different matter. That mind was full of chaos – not unreasonably so, but enough to give Duchess pause. The prophecy had called the Starkine doomed, but whether that doom lay in betrayal or sacrifice was uncertain.
I will be mindful
, she thought.
As is my duty. As is my purpose.

The only real surprise came from Trueheart and the Watcher. They alone were awake, wrapped together in the warm salt of lovemaking, each enmeshed in thoughts of the other. The act twined them together in a way which might have made Duchess smile, had she been able to; instead, she uttered her odd, choking purr of laughter. It was a strange pairing, but perhaps not entirely unexpected, and she wondered (although without genuine curiosity) what the others would make of it, if and when they found out. Certainly, it seemed that neither lover intended to tell: the pact of secrecy was almost as closely woven between them as their shared breath. Detachedly, Duchess probed the emotion. She had no intention of censorship, and was too far removed from these creatures for voyeurism – rather, she was merely concerned for any potential fracture in the group. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated, then her tail flicked, once, in satisfaction. The tryst was nothing sinister.

Content with her observations, Duchess flexed once more, stretching full length on her side, comfortable. There were worse forms to be burdened with. All shapes imposed certain behaviours on their occupants – in this case, an uncommon fondness for mouse flesh and an almost pathological hatred of birds – but such restrictions were easily borne. True, it had been many years since she'd lived as anything else, but Duchess was convinced that her nature had remained fundamentally unaltered. Others might succumb to the travails of animal life, but she would not. Was she not, after all, guided by a higher purpose, a higher function?

I remain. I endure. I am
.

Yawning once more, she remembered the taste of the swan earlier in the day: the hot, dark blood, the succulent flesh. Ever since taking on her current form, she had longed to know what such a creature tasted like, and had not been disappointed. She anticipated with pleasure the next such feast, salivating at the thought of snapping the long, slender neck, cracking the hollow bones.

She felt midnight come as a change in the air, settling its wings across the house like a black cockerel shuffling in his roost. Her charges, though stubborn and frustrating, were safe; and her task, though burdensome at times, was not beyond endurance, nor was it without need. A sigh escaped her, slipping past her pink tongue and bright teeth to vanish without trace.

And then, my debt is paid
.

D
espite being old and dented, the manacle was still sturdy enough to dig deeply into his wrist. It was too tight, almost cutting off circulation to his hand while simultaneously rubbing the skin beneath it raw, so that any attempt at movement pained him on two counts. Not that he had much strength to move, or even breathe; the broken ribs made sure of that. Before he'd grown too exhausted to make the attempt, he'd sat up and pulled his shirt aside in order to see the damage, half-convinced that a bone would be poking through. Thankfully, that wasn't the case, but he was nonetheless covered in a mess of dark bruises, barely beginning to yellow around the edges and still decidedly tender despite the passage of days. One eye–his left– refused to open, swollen shut by what he imagined was a mass of purple swelling. Directly above it, a short, broad cut itched maddeningly as it healed over and pulled at the line of his eyebrow, too raw yet to scratch.

Gently, as he had done every day since the beating, he probed the inside of his mouth with his tongue, wincing whenever he brushed a loose tooth. Several had been shaken, two more severely than the rest, but through a miracle all had remained rooted in his jaw. Whether that counted as curse or blessing remained to be seen. For such small things, his teeth were responsible for a great deal of discomfort, causing migraine after nauseous migraine. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to try to chew, and so, despite his hunger, he remained oddly thankful that the opportunity of finding out hadn't presented itself.

At times, his lesser injuries were almost painful or discomforting enough to draw attention from the hole in his chest. Almost. That was a fire unquenchable, either by sleep or, it seemed, time. The knife had gone deep, half-twisting as it slid in beside bone, through muscle and meat and blood. If he tried to roll over, he fancied he could still feel the sharp, agonising scrape of the out-thrust, which was just one more good reason to stay still. Without painkillers or means of distraction, the memory of it invaded his dreams, what scattered few he managed. For days now, he'd been a sergeant shot through the heart at Gallipoli, a soldier at Dunkirk, and a dead nurse in Tripoli gargling life as her husband caught her in bed with another man. He'd tried to steer away, but the pain made him powerless. Even without the manacle, he was a captive, prisoner in his own head as surely as if his skull were made of iron.

Perhaps he'd never been free.

In his more lucid moments, he wondered where he was. Underground, he guessed, from the lack of light and the high, stone walls, but that speculation was little better than if he'd thought nothing at all. The floor beneath him was hard, but surprisingly warm, heated from below via some means he couldn't fathom. The room was square, the single door made entirely of half-rusted metal. The hinges scraped and creaked, as though they, too, were in pain. There was almost no light at all.

Since being chained to the wall, he'd been left alone. The exception was his carer, a quiet, mouse-brown woman with sympathetic eyes and deft, gentle hands. There was no particular rhythm to her visits that he could tell, but then, he spent so much time unconscious or unthinking that the observation was worth little. The woman never spoke, although once or twice he'd thought to ask her name. Rather than answering, she would lift his head and trickle water into his mouth, or else remove the crusted bandage from his chest and rub a pungent, sweet-smelling salve into the knife wound. Coward that he was, he would scream when she did that, or try to; his throat was so dry that only a whimper came out, as though he were no stronger than a child; and perhaps he wasn't.

Despite his pain, he had no way of knowing how injured he really was. Certainly, the woman said nothing of either recovery or regression, and even had she seemed likely to answer, he wouldn't have asked. Either alternative was too difficult. He didn't want to die – he wasn't brave enough, and never had been. He clutched at life like a drowning man to flotsam. Surrounded by uncertainty, he was just as afraid to live.
Perhaps it would be easier
, he thought,
if I didn't deserve this
. The idea was as muzzy as it was comfortless: he did deserve this, and so, appropriately, it wasn't easy. The thought had crossed his mind that perhaps he really was dead; that God existed after all, and had sent him to purgatory. But that would have made an ironic breed of sense, and the boiling heart of life, he'd come to see, was chaos. There
was
no sense.

On the fifth day, he began to wake up. For the first time since coming to the dungeon, he found himself able to regain a modicum of his usual control. At first, as before, he drifted, spinning idly between battles, murders, fights. Midway through the Sadarian Wars (whatever they were), he forced himself away from the pitched battle at Glas Mar, resting instead inside the mind of a young
arkan'i
as s/he meditated in the light-filled Sorku Cloister. It was alien, impossible and beautiful all at once, but without more strength, he couldn't place it in any kind of context. Even so, the experience helped clear his mind as nothing else could have done.
I will escape,
he prayed, to no greater deity than hope.
I will survive
.

On the sixth day, Sharpsoft returned.

At first, when the door to his cell opened, he assumed it was the woman, come to offer her usual silent ministrations. It wasn't until he recognised the big, green-black boots, heard their heavy, awful tread, that he truly began to panic. He knew those boots intimately, remembered the blunt steel bite as they crashed into his ribs and legs and jaw. A small, wet cry escaped him as he tried to wriggle backwards across the floor, wincing further as the manacle pulled tight, but there was nowhere to hide. Frightened, he squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the blow that never came. His heart began to hammer in his chest. Had Sharpsoft come to finish the job? All self-recriminating thoughts of guilt and deservedness vanished, and he began to sob in fear as that wild, fierce, alien man knelt down beside him.

‘I'm sorry.’

At first, the words didn't register; then he felt something
clink
against his chain. There was a grinding sound. The manacle fell away. Bewildered, he looked up, hatred and disbelief filling him like a balloon as he stared into those weird, unnatural eyes. Startlingly, Sharpsoft dropped his gaze first, reaching out and gently propping him up against the wall. His ribs burned with the motion, but he was determined not to show it, fright abruptly giving way to stubbornness.

‘What're you… geroff,’ he mumbled angrily, the words hideously slurred. His visitor said nothing, only reached out to check the bandage on his chest. It was impossible not to wince at that, but he hated himself all the same for showing it.

‘You're free to go, now,’ Sharpsoft added. His voice was low, the tone unfathomable. ‘But come back here again and I really will kill you.’

Dazed. He felt dazed. His head was spinning.

‘Where am I?’

‘Do you need to know?’ Silver, gold and purple flickered, threatening to swamp him. He looked away.

‘Beyond the door are supplies. Food, a bag. That manner of thing. Leave when you feel ready. You won't be stopped.’ A pause. ‘There's also a pot of the salve that's been used on you; rub it into the wound whenever you hurt. It won't heal you straightaway, but the pain should start to ebb in a day or so.’

‘Why?’ Uncertainty, fury, disbelief. ‘You bastard. You don't even know –’

‘Presume nothing about me.’ The words were spoken softly, but with force enough for the purpose. ‘I know more than you think.’ Those weird eyes raked him. ‘Do you understand, Glide?’

‘Understand?’ Shakily, Glide pushed himself up the wall, wincing with the effort of standing as he straightened. ‘I
understand
that you're more a traitor than I ever was. At least you had a choice.’

‘And you did not?’ Sharpsoft asked. Eerily, his eyes flickered.

It was Glide who broke the contact, hot with shame. ‘No,’ he whispered.

‘Nor did I.’

Surprised, Glide glanced up again, but his captor – his liberator? – was already at the door. The bone-white leather of his coat gleamed dully, that peculiar moon-coloured mix of silver, cream, white and yellow, faintly luminous even without light. Glide didn't mean to speak, but the words slid out like ichor from under a scab.

‘Why betray Solace? I thought you were
helping
her! Why beat me, stab me, then let me go? Why are you
doing
all this?’

He didn't expect an answer, and almost, didn't get one. For a moment, it seemed Sharpsoft would ignore him, continuing out through the door as if nothing had transpired, leaving Glide angry, his question unanswered. Passing through the frame, however, he held out a hand, gripping the stone so that he swayed in place.

‘Because I have no choice. Because, perhaps, you do.’ And then, quietly: ‘Because I, like you, have never been free.’

And then he was gone, dropping his hand slowly from the door as he moved around the corner and out of sight, leaving Glide – battered, bruised and bloody – to shiver in the sudden cold, alone.