Weapon of Flesh (48 page)

The room was silent; the Grandfather wasn’t there.

Mya was.

The blood he’d smelled was hers.  She lay upon the slab that once held him, the same bindings that had restrained him now held her.  The injuries that marred her flesh from head to toe bore the mark of careful infliction; flesh had been surgically parted and nerves carefully dissected, but the bleeding was minimal.  Blood vessels had been avoided to prolong her torment.

Of all the possible things he thought he might find, this had not been one of them.

Why would the Grandfather torture Mya?

Two possible answers clicked into his mind: First, Lad’s sudden and unexplained disappearance led the Grandfather to believe that Mya had betrayed him.  She could have orchestrated his disappearance simply by altering her master’s orders.  In retribution, or perhaps to find out if Mya had indeed been disloyal, the Grandfather had used pain as either punishment or an inducement to confession.

The other possibility was that this was a very elaborate trap.

In Lad’s mind the former seemed infinitely more likely, simply because he could not imagine Mya agreeing to such mutilation.  The wounds were real; of that he was positive.  She had been flayed very carefully and very precisely to inflict pain.  And even now, as he listened to her rapid, rasping breath, he knew she was in agony.

If this were a trap, what was the worst that would befall him if he ventured into the chamber?  He could make sure no one lay hidden quickly enough.  There was only one entrance to the room, and he would know well in advance of any surprise attack unless the Grandfather chose to follow him down and attack while Lad tried to free Mya.  If that happened, Lad would be only slightly worse off, for he was ready for such an attack.  He had to fight the Grandfather regardless, so what would be the advantage to this?

No, the advantage was only in position, not surprise, and Mya would never have agreed to it.

The torture was real.  She was in pain.  And he was the cause of it.

He moved into the room, every step calculated, every breath held for a heartbeat while he listened and looked for any clue of attack.  All was quiet save for Mya’s labored breathing.  No one hid in the twisted machinery.

He moved to the slab where she lay.

She was splayed like a sacrificial lamb, stripped and bound at elbow, wrist, knee and ankle with padded iron.  Unfortunately for Mya, she and he were about the same size; the bonds fit her very well indeed.  There was no room to struggle, and she hadn’t the immunity to pain that had allowed him to wrench free of the restraints.

He stood less than a step from her and took a moment to examine both her condition and the iron bands that held her.  The restraining bands were held in place with black iron pins, not locks.  He could free her in seconds.  The wounds were quite real, and a tray bearing the implements that had inflicted them lay nearby.  The blood on the tools was dry, but just barely.  Where it had pooled beneath her was still moist to the touch.  Scarcely a finger could he have placed upon her without touching some type of injury.  Her face, neck and arms were lined with parallel grooves, her legs cut in patterns that followed the lines of the muscles.  One cut had been cauterized when it bled too freely.  Breathing itself was a torture, he could see, for both her abdomen and torso were crisscrossed with shallow trenches of crimson.  Her chest fluttered with every breath, the muscles between each rib having been teased apart to expose the nerves.  The Grandfather was very skilled to have inflicted so much damage and not killed her.

Despite the restraints, her clenched hands strained, struggling for freedom.  He knew that feeling, that helplessness. 

“Mya,” he whispered, laying a hand over her mouth to prevent any noise.

Her eyes flung open, then widened even further as she recognized that he was not the Grandfather.  She jerked away from him, fighting the bonds, her cries of fear muffled against his palm.

“Mya, be still!  You must be quiet!  I’m not here for you, just the Grandfather.”  She seemed to calm at this, which honestly surprised him.  Did she fear him so much?  “Quietly now.  He may be listening from another room.  You must tell me where he is; then I will release you.  Do you understand?”

She nodded frantically, and he eased his hand away.

“Why?  Why come here?  He’ll kill you!”  Her voice was strange, husky, probably hoarse from screaming.

“You know why.  I’m here to kill him, and he knows it.”  He placed a hand on her brow, trying to avoid the cuts.  “Now, where is he?”

“I don’t know.  I passed out.  When I came to, he was gone.”  Her eyes flickered to the door, pupils wide with fear.  “He could come back any second!”

“I’m here for him, Mya.  I’m going to kill him.  When I do, we’ll both be free.”

“No, Lad.  We won’t be free.”  Her eyes were strange, the lids lolling closed whenever she wasn’t looking right at him.  Her pupils weren’t tracking his movements.  “I’m sorry, Lad.  He won’t let me go.  He made me...”

“What, Mya?  He made you what?”

“He made me put it on.  I thought I wanted it, but I don’t.  Now I’m trapped, and he’ll never let me go.”

“What?  Put what on?  What are you talking about, Mya?”  She was acting strangely, even for one who had been tortured.  It was almost as if...

He gripped her face, forcing her mouth open.  One sniff told him she’d taken opium, a strong narcotic that would dull even the most intense pain.  That meant...

He leapt back from her and scanned the room quickly, but there was still no one there.  It was a trap, but how...?

“The ring,” Mya said as both of her hands opened wide, releasing two small glass spheres to fall to the hard stone floor.

He saw the motion out of the corner of his eye and dove to catch one of the spheres, but the other struck the floor and shattered.  He sprang away, sprinting for the door, but it was already closing.  It slammed well before he reached it, and a silvery light shimmered around its perimeter.  Magic.  He was trapped.

Heedless, he slammed into the door as hard as he could.  The room reverberated with the impact and pain lanced through his shoulder, but the magically bound door held.  It was useless.  Escape was impossible.

He turned back to Mya, but her form was already obscured by a billowing cloud of vapor released by the shattered sphere.  The cloud would expand to fill the entire room, and he could already tell from Mya’s slow, steady breathing that the gas would render him unconscious.

He had to think of something!  There had to be a way out!

He looked at the door, then at the advancing cloud of vapor.  He had about ten more breaths before he would be engulfed by the narcotic gas.  He sat down, struggling to calm his mind through the fear.  He breathed as deeply and as rapidly as he could for nine breaths, then held it.  He let the cloud engulf him while he slipped into a meditative trance.  He slowed his heart, slowed his blood in his veins, slowed his mind...

The vapor tingled on his skin as the cloud swallowed him up.  He struggled to fight the effect, struggled to shunt blood away from his skin where the narcotic was invading him.  Slowly, he began to lose the battle.  Numbness invaded his limbs, then his mind, and finally darkness engulfed him.

Chapter
XXVII

W
iggen watched the sliver of sunlight migrate across the floor, just as she had watched the moonlight hours before.  She’d not slept.  Instead, she sat wrapped in her blankets, thinking of the one she loved and trying to keep hope alive in her heart.  It almost struck her as funny that one such as she, scarred and tainted by violence, should be in such a position.  How could she fall in love?  And even more a mystery, how could someone love her?

But she knew it was real.  She could feel it.  It was different than anything she’d ever experienced.  It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time; it was like beautiful music and a pain deep within, like a song and salt in a wound.  She knew that the pain was simply his absence, and that he hadn’t come back to her yet.

As the patch of light moved inch by relentless inch, and she remained alone, the pain began to overwhelm the joy; the music began to fade behind the ache.

She recalled the first time she saw him, standing in the kitchen, filthy and skinny as a starved rat with a whole side of beef balanced on his shoulder.  And there was that quizzical look on his face, all curiosity, not a malicious thought in him.  That, she realized, was what she’d fallen in love with; not the strength or that he had saved her from those thugs.  It was his innocence, the honesty that comes only with frank curiosity bereft of avarice or any hidden motive.  He was the first person she’d ever met who wanted to know her for what she was, good and bad, strengths and flaws.  He didn’t want to change her, didn’t want to make her something more or take something from her that she didn’t have to give.  And he’d helped her with her own pain, not because he expected something back, some payment for his effort, but because he could.  He was an honest and good soul, and she loved him for that.

The wedge of sunlight became thinner and thinner as it approached the wall into which the window was set, much as her hope became slimmer with every passing minute.  She willed it to stop, wished time would halt in wait for his return.  But time, and love, and pain do not wait, it seemed. Then the wedge of sunlight vanished completely.  It was highsun.  It was time.

He wasn’t coming back.

She found herself standing without remembering having stood.  The meager pile of belongings—the food, a skin of water, the blankets and her dress—looked alien to her.  She wasn’t hungry.  After drinking some water, more because she knew she should rather than from thirst, she got dressed.  Two of the blankets she folded neatly and draped over her arm.  The rest she piled back in the trunk.

It was more difficult than she remembered, crawling through the furnace vent to the damper that led to the alley and outside, but she made it after resting only twice.  There were people about, but the alley was not well traveled, and her egress from the furnace vent went unseen.  She tucked her bundle over her arm, draped her hair down over her distinctive scar and started walking north toward the more familiar neighborhoods of Eastmarket and the
Tap and Kettle
.

At least she would see her father again before they arrested her, though it really didn’t matter any more.

Nothing really mattered any more.

Lad awakened as he never had before in his life—in pain.

It pierced through the haze that fogged his mind and numbed his limbs, bringing him to a groggy wakefulness that allowed him to perceive his surroundings as if through a thick, smothering blanket.  The pain was sharp but not deep, a recurrent prick upon his chest.  It was not the ache of his burns, to which he’d grown accustomed; in fact, that discomfort was much less than it had been.  His head hurt somewhat as well, but that really didn’t bother him as much as the continuous stabbing on his chest.

He rolled his head to the side, weak against the lingering fingers of numbing narcotic, and tried to brush away the bothersome pain.  He could not lift his arm.  He tried the other, but it, too, would not answer his commands.  He tried to sit up, but that action was denied him as well by a restraining pressure on his arms and legs.  Then the pain suddenly stopped.