Weapon of Flesh (40 page)

“All of it?” she asked, hearing the fear in his voice.  He’d never felt pain before, and it scared him.

“I don’t know.  I feel… different.  Strange.  I feel like killing my master.  I feel…  all the people I have killed.  I feel their deaths inside me; it makes me want to cry out, and....”  Tears resumed their tracks down his cheeks.  “All those people…  But at the same time I want to hold you and touch you.  I feel warm and weak at the same time.  Is that love?”

“Oh, yes.”  She drew him closer.  “But that’s just part of it.”  She kissed him again, this time with tenderness instead of desperation, and when she felt him kiss her back, it was as if the heavens had taken her heart.

Suddenly he broke away, his eyes wide with panic.

“The guards!” he hissed, grabbing her hand and pulling her from the cell, fear plain on his face.  “We’ve got to go!”

“No, Lad.  Just you!”  She stopped him, not by force, for he seemed as strong as ever, but her words brought him up short.  “You go.  They’re not after me.  I’ll just slow you down.  I’ll tell them something, and you can find me later.”

“There may be no later, Wiggen!”  He waved a hand at the dead guards.  “How can you explain this?  They’ll kill you if you don’t tell them who did this.”

“But I can’t --”

“You can, and you will, Wiggen!”  He dragged her out of the cell, snatching the keys from the lock in passing.  She saw the stark desperation in him.  Not only was he scared, he was scared of feeling scared.  All the emotions that the magic had blocked—the emotions that had been denied him his whole life—were rushing down on him, and he didn’t know what to feel.  “We must go!”

“Alright!”  It was impossible for her to fight him, she realized, although she had no idea how the two of them would get out of this place.

“This way.”  He snatched a torch from the wall and handed it to her, then pulled her along at a run, keeping the keys quiet in his free hand.  They stepped over the bodies of the guards and lunged up the stairs.  At the top there were two doors.  Wiggen could hear faint cries of alarm; more guards were coming.

Lad slipped a key into the lock of the door to the left and broke it off, then unlocked the right-hand door and pulled her through.  On the other side he locked the door and again broke the key off in the lock.  They stood in a store room a dozen strides long and half as wide.  There were shelves holding everything from manacles to rope to blankets, but there was no way out.

At the back were barrels full of torches, one of long iron bars, and a rack of short, wooden batons.  He took two of the batons and handed her one.

“What’s this for?”

“Can you see in the dark?”

“What?  No, of course I can’t.”

“I didn’t think so.”  He moved to the corner and tipped the barrel of iron bar stock, wheeling it out of his way.  “It will be dark, and I don’t think the torch will stay lit.  You can use the baton to feel your way.  Just run it along the wall in front of you.”

“Where are we going?”

“The river.”  He retrieved one bar from the barrel and came back to look at the floor.

“The river?”  Now it was her turn to be frightened.  “But Lad!  I can’t swim!”

“Swim?”  He jammed the iron bar into a small hole in the floor and pried.  To Wiggen’s astonishment, a large flagstone tilted up.  He was certainly as strong as ever.  Under it was an iron-bound wooden door with a thick padlock.  One of the keys clicked in the lock and he heaved the portal open.  “We won’t need to swim, Wiggen.  We’re going
under
the river.”

“Under it?”  She stared in astonishment as he took the torch from her and dropped it through the hole.  It landed many feet below with a hiss and a splash.  The room was plunged into darkness, the only light a faint yellow wedge from beneath the door.

“Uh, I’m not so sure about this, Lad.”  Wiggen peered down into the dark hole, dubiously.

A sharp crash sounded behind them.  The guards were breaking through the first door.

“No time,” Lad whispered in her ear.  “Hang on to me.”

He gripped her tightly and stepped into the dark hole.  It was all Wiggen could do to refrain from screaming as they plunged into the darkness.

Mya woke to the stunning shock of a backhand slap across the face.  She rolled off the bench, her mind reeling from the blow.  For an instant she thought she was home again, a young girl fending off the blows of an abusive mother.  Her arms came up defensively and she curled into a ball on the floor, expecting the first kick.

Then she remembered.  And the present was almost as frightening as the past.

“Where is my weapon, dear Mya?” the Grandfather asked, his tone deadly sweet as he stepped around the stone bench.

“What?”  She rolled to her feet, her mind still waking up, disoriented from the shock of the slap and the surprise that she was still in the interrogation chamber.  She’d been waiting for Lad’s return and must have fallen asleep.  She fingered her stinging cheek.  She tasted blood, but the blow had not been as hard as she’d thought, not as hard as she’d felt as a child.  None of her teeth were loose anyway.  She fought the urge to fill her hand with the hilt of a weapon and answered, “Probably still out killing royalty.  Why?  What’s wrong?” 

“It’s nearly morning, dear Mya.”  He stepped closer, and she suppressed the urge to back away.  That was when she noticed the gleam of rage in the Grandfather’s face.  His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a rictus smile, like a dog ready to bite, and his eyes...  She shuddered. 

“He hasn’t returned, and my spies inform me that his latter two targets are still breathing.  What do you suppose happened to him?”

Sarcasm dripped from his question, and Mya realized the source of his anger—he thought she had something to do with this! 

“I don’t know, Grandfather.”  She kept her voice level, vowing not to show fear.  She knew what happened when you showed a dog, or an abusive parent, that you were scared.  “Did he kill the girl?”

“I have not yet received a report from my spy with the Royal Guard.  Perhaps you would like to discover that little tidbit of information for me.”  His stance shifted slightly under his robes, settling, returning to a resting posture from one ready to strike.  “Perhaps you were correct, and my weapon has been over-taxed.”

“I will find out, Grandfather.”  She turned to go, but was brought up short by his voice.

“Please, do so, my dear.  And do remember to come back, especially if you
don’t
find my weapon.”  He followed her slowly up the steps, silently, as if he was stalking her.  “I would hate to lose
both
of my best young weapons in one night.”

“Thank you for your concern, Grandfather,” she said tightly, bristling at the implied threat.  “I’ll be careful.”

At the top of the stairs she opened the door and stepped through, but as she held it open for her master, she realized with a start that he was no longer behind her.  He had vanished without a word or sound, as invisible and intangible as death itself.  She hurried to her chambers and changed quickly into the clothes she used for reconnaissance.  She left by the main gate, hitching up her skirts and breaking into an easy jog, heedless of the shadows that deepened in her wake.

Lad wormed his way up through the thick iron storm grating and reached his slime-slicked hand back down for Wiggen.  She gripped it dubiously, knowing hers was as wet and slick as his.  But his grip was like iron, and he lifted her out easily.  She squeezed her shapely frame through the bars, smearing even more filth down the front of her dress.

“This will never come clean!” she hissed in frustration, wiping her grimy hand on the equally grimy material.

“Quiet,” Lad whispered, nodding toward the dim lights in the ramshackle buildings that littered this quarter of the city.  “Some people are awake already.  We don’t want anyone to see us.”

“But where are we going?”

“There are places where no one lives here in The Sprawls, Wiggen,” he explained, tugging her along the edge of the litter-strewn street. 

Her shoe slipped on something slick and she cringed, not wanting to think of what it might be.  She supposed there was a bad smell—she knew The Sprawls smelled from the times when the wind blew from the south—but hours of slogging through the sewers of Twailin had inured her to bad smells.  She wondered if she’d ever be clean again.

“Here,” he whispered, pulling her into the deeper shadows of an alley.  “This is the one.”

“The one what?”  She looked up at the abandoned building, skeptically.  The windows were all boarded, and the place looked like it was ready to fall down.

“The one I was looking for.”  He led her to a low window well set half below the level of the alley.  The glass was miraculously intact and the latch yielded to whatever tinkering he did.  She couldn’t see, but she thought she heard the click of metal on metal before the window creaked open.  “Quickly!”

He held out a hand to her, and as she wiggled through she noticed that the panes were not dark glass as she had thought, but black iron.  The window was actually a vent damper, and she found herself in a pitch-black shaft that led down at a shallow angle.

“Lad?” she said, trying to keep the tremor of fear out of her voice.  She waved her baton ahead of her as she shimmied down.

“Yes, Wiggen.  I’m coming.”

Then she heard the creak of the damper and she realized that it really wasn’t completely dark, at least not until the door clicked closed and her vision failed her completely.  She waved her hand in front of her face, but saw nothing.  Now
that
was dark!

“I can’t see anything!  I’m afraid to move!”

“Don’t worry, Wiggen.  I can see.”  She looked toward his voice and saw the two faint motes that she knew were his eyes.  She didn’t know how some of the magic in him had remained while some had been broken, but he seemed as strong, quick and agile as ever.  The burns that outlined the shattered runes, however, had failed to heal, and she’d seen him grimace every time he brushed one of the rows of tender blisters.  Pain was a new experience for Lad, as were all the whirling emotions that she knew were now rattling around within him like beans in a cup.  She’d caught him smiling on more than one occasion for no apparent reason, and he kept watching her as if the mere sight of her was entertaining.

He squeezed past her in the narrow shaft—it was big enough to crouch in, but not a lot more—and she felt his hand on her wrist.

“Come on.  It’s not far.”

“What’s not far?  How do you know this place?”

“I did a lot of exploring in the weeks I worked for Forbish.  I found this place one night.  I think it used to be a laundry.  This shaft opens up under an old furnace they used to heat big pots of water.”

“Like the one on Copper street?”  For years she had taken their sheets and blankets to the big laundry house run by a family of Westerners a few blocks from the inn.  “Do you think we could wash?”

“I hope so; we won’t get far smelling like this.”

She felt him step down into a depression, then thought she caught the glimmer of light from around him.

“Hold still for a moment, Wiggen.  I’ve got to get this old door open.”

She held as still as she could while she listened to him tinkering with some kind of metal mechanism.  Then rusty iron squealed, and a dim light flooded the low area ahead of them.

“Come on.”

She wasted no time in crawling through the underside of the furnace and out the old ash door that Lad had opened.  She stood up and stretched in the early morning light that streamed through the cracks in the boarded windows.  The furnace room was cavernous, ceilings of brick arched high over her head.  The place was strewn with strange equipment and tools.  It seemed as if the owners had barely taken anything when they left.

“Come on upstairs,” Lad said, smiling at her and taking her hand again.  “This place is big, and the room where they washed the clothing is right above us.”

She followed him up the steps, daydreaming of soap and water and piles of crisp clean sheets to fall asleep upon.  They’d been slogging, crawling, wading and scrabbling through dark dank tunnels all night.  She was exhausted and more than a little hungry.  At the top of the stairs Lad pushed open a heavy, oaken door and they entered the laundry proper.