Take the body and give me the rest (8 page)

Dirst walked
ahead of her and pushed the door open with both hand and boot. They
walked in and while the music didn’t stop, everybody in the tavern
quickly became aware of them. It was no secret that some young
wealthy nobles were hunting a runaway debt slave who had murdered
one of their relatives, a retired General. Rumour was they were
offering a large purse of silver for whoever could help them with
information to where he’d gone. Problem was: no one had seen him.
The description was young, tall Northern debt slave, ragged clothes
and, given the state of the General’s body, should have blood
dripping from head to toe.

Seraphina
approached the bar and everyone stood back out of her way. She
wasn’t a physically imposing person, but in Cravoss who you were
mattered more than anything else. Her two cousins were well known
to have fought and won many duels and never to have had to answer
for it with the city guard; their family’s wealth protected them
from embarrassment and punishment. Duels were semi-legal even if it
was a well-trained noble against a drunken sailor or musician with
no chance, proper training or even a good sword.

She turned to
face the assembled people and even the musicians on stage stopped
playing as she spoke. ‘We are looking for the man that murdered my
uncle, my cousin Dirst’s own father. He’s tall, young, Northern
and, to make this so much easier, I have a drawing of him for you
all to see.’

She held up
another charcoal drawing and slowly showed it to the people in the
tavern. It was clear that a ripple of recognition was running
through them. Behind the counter stood Dean with his daughter.
Seraphina addressed him directly. ‘Was this man in here last
night?’ she said coldly.

Dean was
clearly confused and struggling. His mind just couldn’t bend around
the fact that the nice Northern scribe was a debt slave and a
killer.

‘Was he here?’
she asked again.

‘Aye, the man
in that drawing was here, but a killer and a debt slave? He was a
scribe; he read letters for us all. What kind of slave can read and
bloody write then?’ he said.

She smiled at
him, ignoring most of his words, as she knew well the answer. She
reached into the pocket of her fine cloak and drew out a small
handful of loose silver coins, and dropped them loudly on the
polished wooden counter top.

‘And where did
he say he was going?’ she asked.

Dean looked at
her and looked at the two men at her sides, both wore calm and
contempt in their expressions, hands plainly on the pommels of
their rapiers.

‘He didn’t,
Milady. He never said anything about where he was off to. He slept
the night right here and in the morning when I woke up, he was
gone. That’s all I can tell you.’

Seraphina
reached out with her hand and slid the pile of coins directly in
front of Dean’s daughter. Addressing her instead, she asked, ‘Where
do you think he might have gone, girl?’

The girl looked nervously at her father and then at the coins,
temptation fighting loyalty. ‘He
was
headed for Pelloss, alright. He was asking me about the place last
night and this morning I told him you lot were looking for him and
he walked right out in the direction of the docks.’

Dean looked at
his daughter, disgusted, as she slid the money off the counter and
into her hand.

Without another
word, Seraphina turned and walked out of the tavern with her men in
tow.

Seth sat on a padded chair which the General knew was called a
lounge
surrounded
by piles of books in Her Ladyship’s lavish suite. The light had
dropped, being provided only by lamps and shielded candles now.
Her
attendant
had retired for the evening and Her Ladyship walked back and forth
across the room, looking at this or that book and putting different
things in order. Seth again remarked that her face was strong and
beautiful and that, even though she appeared old in form, her
spirit was still that of a younger person, she was filled with such
a vital energy.

‘Now, first
things first. You’ll need to start referring to me as Elizebetha
and not Her Ladyship this and Lady that,’ she said.

Happy with the
idea, Seth replied, ‘Of course, and you can call me Seth—plain old
Seth just like my parents named me, no Master or Sir that I didn’t
earn.’

She stopped her
pacing and sorting. ‘Oh, you’ll earn it; you’ll earn it in hard
work, pain and hunger.’

She started her
pacing and sorting again, talking to him while she moved and slowly
made the room look a little less dishevelled. ‘Do you have any idea
of why I threw you into a life or death fight today?’ she
asked.

He shrugged,
but he had thought it fairly extreme way to test his mettle. ‘I
just assumed you wanted to test me properly, you did take me on as
protection’ he said.

‘The reason is
that inside of you now, you have the memories of Stephan and his
skills, too. There are too many to bring them all out at once, so
they come out only when needed and then they stay with you. Can you
read and write yet?’ she asked.

‘He can, so I
can,’ Seth replied.

‘And when did
you realise you could?’ she asked.

He thought back
to that first discovery in the Mermaid’s Kiss. ‘I looked at some
written words and found I could decipher them.’

‘You needed the
skill and it came. Now, if I’d asked the Officer to spar with you,
the memories and skills of Stephan’s sparring and practise would
have flooded you, but they would have joined with you and that’s
all you would take from him. All the real memories and skills he
had from life and death battles, of killing, of that horrible
talent of his would have been lost. The only way I could make it a
part of you forever was to put your very life at risk,’ she
said.

She moved over
to him and sat near him at the small desk. ‘Now, do you have any
memories of his summoning or the many, many times before you when
he took someone into him?’

Seth cast back
into his mind; he pictured the room where he was chained to the
floor; he thought of the General. He thought of the creature and
the look of the summoning stones but nothing clear came to him,
just a hazy of shapes, darkness and the cold ambitions of a
collector. ‘I can’t picture anything clearly,’ he said.

‘He took
people, Seth. His skill with a sword was only one of his talents.
He built on the takings from many, many other men and boys. He
killed them and took them into him whole. Now they are in you and
you need to unlock each one in turn so that what they knew and
learned isn’t wasted,’ she said.

‘How can I do
that,’ he asked.

‘You need to
try everything you can, try your hand at anything and see if you
feel the tug of the familiar, but also you need to be ready to
dream. Your dreams are no longer your own and soon you’ll find you
share them with his and soon your own victims,’ she said.

‘I don’t intend
to kill anyone I don’t have to,’ he said.

She smiled
slowly at him, shaking her head. ‘We never do, Seth, but guard
against the hunger. The beast will hunger for the flesh soon and
you’ll feel it inside you like a starving man and you’ll have to
fight the other hunger, the hunger of knowledge, of the gatherer.
You’ll meet someone who can do, who knows, who is everything you
want and it’s so easy to take them into you and possess it. Guard
against it, Seth; I don’t want you to become a monster like
Stephan. I’ll help you.’

‘What happens
if I give into it?’ he asked.

‘You’ll become
like them, the Dark Guild. All they do is gather more and more; as
their knowledge grows so does their ambition. They have been around
for hundreds of years, taking more and more, living ageless lives
from the takings of others. We won’t be like them, Seth. We are
meant for better things.’

She stood up
from the desk and placed her hand on his arm. ‘I’m off to bed now,
and you should be as well. When you’re half asleep, I want you to
imagine yourself in a room full of doors, hundreds and hundreds of
doors of different sizes. Try to open some and see where you
go.’

Dirst walked
into the main dining room of the manor house. There his cousin
Seraphina was seated at the table consuming a quick lunchtime
repast. As he entered the room she flicked her hand at a woman
server standing at her shoulder, gesturing for her to leave. When
they were alone in the silence of the well-appointed room he spoke
to her.

‘We have word that he took berth on the ship
The
Opulent
, two months at least to
Pelloss and stopping a few days as usual at the island of Dacar,’
he said quickly.

She put down
her fork and looked at the ceiling, thinking about the situation.
‘That’s too much of a coincidence for me to like it,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’
he asked. Stephan never talked plans with his son, but treated
Seraphina as his equal in intelligence and The Guild.

‘We have
someone on that ship that we’re already watching. Elizebetha of
Black Rock is on that ship, and the purpose of our watching is to
make sure she doesn’t get to port.’

‘Well, just ask
the blade to take both of them instead of one,’ he said with a
casual shrug.

‘Okay, get your
friend in the Cravosi navy to send a letter. We will have it
waiting for our blade in Dacar.’

Chapter 10

The room rocked
ever so slightly with the sway of the ocean, as Seth lay in the
most comfortable bed he’d ever been in to that point so far. He was
warm and fast drifting off to sleep in the womb of the ship. It
felt a safe place, so he allowed himself to sleep in just his pants
with his new dagger under the covers and against his chest. He
didn’t feel his enemies would bother him anymore, but when you are
hired as a guard, you’d better at least pretend to be one he
thought.

As he drifted
quickly into sleep Seth imagined, as Elizebetha had asked him, a
room with many different doors. It was the main room in Bloodcrest
Hall. Large with cold blue stones that made the walls and the
criss-cross of dark wooden beams that held the slate roof in place.
The wall was lined with hundreds of doors, some small, some large,
one was the door of his family’s cottage, one the backdoor to the
General’s manor house. He was aware this was just a creation of his
own, like picturing the face and body of the cute girl from the
tavern that night; but again, Elizebetha had asked he do it, and so
he would.

Seth reached
out for one of the doors with invisible hands and tried to open it.
Nothing happened. He imagined himself trying different ones but
with the same result, they were all stuck fast. Walking through the
room, he spotted a large trapdoor that looked very familiar. He
walked to the wooden trapdoor and reaching down swung it open
without effort. Looking within he could see a familiar stone
staircase, he walked down with a feeling of growing apprehension.
Once he was through the door, it snapped shut and bolted behind his
head. Seth was swallowed by the feeling of being in his own memory.
He walked into the main room and tried to stay calm when it came
into full view. Sitting at a table playing cards and talking were
Yend and Josephine, around them the room in which he killed them
looked the same as it ever had. Carpets on the floors, cupboards
and chests filled, overflowing with stolen clothes and
trinkets.

Yend smiled at
him as he had the first day when he and his friends had strolled in
from the north with a big red target on their backs. Josephine
stood and welcomed him, like the first night he’d come to her
tavern, the Red Minstrel.

‘Seth, so good
of you to join us tonight. You’ve been ignoring us,’ she said in
her most charming voice.

‘It’s true
Seth. We are as much a part of you as that lousy General, and we
are not half as bad. Knaves and thieves yes, but killers . . .
well, yes, but not on the same scale, not by a long stretch,’ Yend
told him, putting down his hand of cards.

Seth was
unafraid, and, truly, he did feel some guilt in killing these two.
Like Yend said, they were crooked as their housing room walls, and
they had planned on killing him—but that was just bad water
compared to poison.

‘Hello, you
two,’ Seth said in a friendly voice. ‘Nice to see you again. Sorry
for ignoring you, been busy trying to escape with my life.’

Yend and
Josephine laughed at that. ‘Oh, not to worry young Master, we are
here to help you. After all, your life is now our life, your neck
is our precious neck. So we’ll help you survive this bloody mess
you’re in,’ Yend said.

‘Well thanks
friend, and what can you do to help me?’ Seth asked.

Josephine
walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. ‘We’ll help you by
setting you free. We’ll show you what you really are and what
you’re capable of. Then this little girl and her rich cousins will
seem as nothing to what you can do.’

Seth suddenly
felt the tear of hunger inside of him like he’d felt back in that
basement. Yend and Josephine had vanished to be replaced with the
ripped and bloody shells the creature had made of them. Seth felt
the compulsion driving him, and couldn’t help himself; the hunger
inside was too great. His knees buckled beneath him, bringing him
facedown towards the bodies. With blunt human teeth, he bit into
the warm flesh still clinging to what was left of Josephine’s small
ribcage. He felt the blood and meat in his mouth, as he ate more
and more, grabbing the bones in his hands, licking them, chewing
the meat off hungrily. His face was covered in blood but the
terrible wracking hunger started to abate.

Memories began
to wash through him: them as children, looks across the table, love
shared in crime. Good times they had. He saw a flash of blonde hair
and caught a view of the cute blonde-haired girl playing fiddle at
the Red Minstrel. He felt a flush of mother’s pride as he watched
her play through Josephine’s eyes.