Blood Witch (8 page)

Yuri stopped
abruptly, just where the bathhouse met the tunnel that snaked out
towards the entrance. Corrin stood next to him, waiting, until Yuri
looked over his shoulder at Alaysha.

"Put him in the
chains."

"Him? Corrin?"

Yuri's brow
lifted. "Corrin? I thought you called him the carrion?"

Alaysha would keep
his gaze. She would. She would not look down in the face of that
bald knowledge.

Corrin backed up
before Alaysha could protest or agree. "You've lost your mind," he
told Yuri.

"I have lost one
thing only, and it is not my mind." Yuri stepped closer to Corrin
whose face shifted from disbelief to panic. Strange how a man so
adept at offering pain could quake so. Yuri seemed oblivious to the
man's fear, and Alaysha could see how his own training was used to
great effect. He took in Alaysha's rigid posture, her dreams
realized, true, but a fearful thing to see occur nonetheless, and
he advanced on Corrin once more.

"If you do not
retreat to those shackles, I will kill you right now."

A sickening kind
of hope crept across Corrin's face. He knew he would not die in
this moment. Alaysha could have felt sorry for him until Yenic took
her hand. It was hot, too hot, and clammy with sweat. She didn't
have to look to the table next to those shackles to be reminded of
the tools that lay there waiting for use, to know how afraid he'd
been. How badly The Carrion wanted to use them.

She lost her
pity.

"Will you choose,
Corrin, or must I?" Yuri asked.

Corrin shuffled
back into the cavern and stood waiting beneath the shackles.

Yuri nodded at
Alaysha. "Bind him."

Wordless, she did
as he told her. Corrin glared into her face, and although she
wouldn't take in his eyes, she knew they were filled with hate.

"I was too easy on
you," he whispered.

"My father would
have killed you otherwise."

He chuckled low.
"Your father pretends he doesn't know how I trained you. Are you
truly that stupid?"

She said nothing,
merely jerked his wrists into the manacles, stretched them, pinched
his fingers with the clamps.

"Truth is," he
said. "I told him everything. How you wept. How your ribs sounded
when they cracked. How much you enjoyed our time together."

She gathered spit.
How dare he? How dare he make her remember. She grabbed his chin
with her fingers to hold him fast, looked into his black eyes, and
sent the gob straight at him.

"You can rot in
here," she said.

He acted as though
the fluid wasn't there. "I would if he didn't need me so badly." He
chuckled. "You go with your boy. I'll just wait until Yuri returns
for me."

Her legs were
trembling, but she managed to leave him and follow out the
bathhouse into the intermittent dark of the tunnel. Yenic took the
back, her father the front. She was so engrossed in her thoughts
she wasn't aware Yuri had stopped until she walked into his
back.

He turned and
looked down at her. The blue eyes that rarely met hers and that
could be so striking were merciless in their directness, with the
flickering light of torches playing over them.

"You told me
before the thing that made you agree to kill me was because I never
gave you a choice about killing others."

She said nothing;
she had said it, just nine or so turns ago, when he wanted to know
why she was willing to put him and the entire city to her power to
save just one girl: Aedus.

He looked over her
shoulder in the direction of the snaking tunnel. "You have that
choice now."

Kill Corrin?
Surely he didn't mean it. She pulled her arms across her chest. So
many times beneath the Carrion's hand had she wished it. Dreamed it
when she passed out, begged for it when she'd psyched as much
moisture as she could from the cavern and still there was too much
to pull from him.

She felt Yuri's
hand on her shoulder. "He will stay there until you decide." He
snuffed with finality and turned from her. In seconds he was out of
sight, lost in the darkness before she felt Yenic behind her
again.

"Let's get out of
here."

She couldn't speak
to him either, she was so filled with conflicting thoughts and
emotions. Not knowing who to trust: her father who'd always used
her, or this boy who pretended to love her and lied to her. Knowing
she was now being given permission to kill again, but only by her
choice, when she'd always just been ordered to do so. Ordered, but
never wanting to take life. The flood of thoughts were enough to
get her feet moving by way of escape from them.

She was just
seeing the far-off light of the iron bars when she realized Gael
was still there, a hunched form next to the stone he'd settled
against.

Yuri must have
passed right by him and Gael, obviously feeling guilty about having
led Alaysha into the mountain face, had opted to stay hunched next
to the wall.

"Gael?" she said,
testing her voice.

No response nor
movement came from the pile of leather and boots.

"Gael?" She said
again, and Yenic brushed past her to put his hands on the man's
shoulders.

"Oh no," he
murmured.

No? Oh no? That
couldn't be good. "Yenic? What's wrong?"

He stood from his
squat at Gael's side and pointed down at the man's throat. It took
a few moments, a few steps, and a close examination to see a tiny
quill jutting from just behind Gael's ear.

"What is it?" She
didn't truly want to know the answer.

Yenic folded his
arms across his chest, exasperated. "Aedus," he said.

Chapter 6

It took the two of them to stretch Gael out into the
sunshine beyond the doors. By the time they had dragged him through
the iron gates and lain him flat, Alaysha was both out of breath
and weak. It had taken all of her command of herself to work
without giving in to the still lingering pain of her injury.

Yenic pulled the
quill and passed it to Alaysha who inspected it. Porcupine. Hollow
and empty. She shrugged at Yenic. "I don't understand." She leaned
over and listened at Gael's mouth again. Yes. Breath. Shallow, as
though he was sleeping but not quite under enough. "He's
alive."

"Of course he is.
Do you think Aedus a murderer?"

An old woman with
a basket of onions strolled by and, seeing the witch and a man
staring down at what was obviously one of Yuri's soldiers, gave
them an abrupt wide berth.

"We should get him
out of sight," Yenic said. "We don't want to make people
nervous."

"How long will he
be out?"

Yenic pursed his
lips, thinking. "The last batch had me out for a couple of
hours."

"A couple of
hours? You?" Alaysha stared at him. "Last batch?"

He shrugged one
shoulder deferentially. "She found a new pastime while we were
searching for Edulph."

It sounded like
there was much more background, but it also didn't seem the time to
talk about it. Instead, Alaysha gave her attention to Gael. "So if
he's out for a couple of hours, we need to get him out of
sight."

Yenic said nothing
but gave her an I-told-you-so look.

"Yes," she
answered. "That's what you said, I know." She scanned the area of
the curtain, searching for a good spot to put him, and finding
none, stated the obvious. "Why don't we just bring him to his
sister? Is not as though we've done anything wrong."

Simple enough,
except she was already aching from the exertion of dragging him
into the sunlight. She hoped Yenic would come up with a better
plan.

Yenic reached for
Gael's feet. "If you say so, but you take the head part. I don't
want to be anywhere near that mouth if he wakes up." He lifted.
Grunted. Alaysha reached beneath Gael's shoulders and when she
tried to heft him, found she couldn't keep from wincing and letting
go. He fell with a thunk to the ground.

"I can't," she
said.

Yenic chewed his
lip thoughtfully. "Hurts too much?"

"I kind of overdid
it during the attack."

"Kind of?"

She sighed,
looking down at Gael's head and settled for easing onto the dirt
and pulling his head onto her lap. "I guess I got stabbed a little
bit."

Yenic dropped the
feet and managed to look annoyed and concerned at the same time.
"Stabbed."

Said baldly like
that, it did sound a little extreme.

She nodded. Gael's
head fit nicely into the crook of her thighs and she truly did feel
winded and sore.

"You go get his
sister. She'll know what to do with him. I'll stay here."

A hound snuffled
up to her as she sat. It had a white spot on the top of its nose
that reminded her of Barruch. She would go to the stables later and
bring him a parsnip from Saxa's kitchen. That was providing she
wasn't angry at her for getting Gael into this condition. Yenic had
yet to leave and she wondered what the hesitation was.

"What are you
waiting for?"

"I don't know," he
said. "Something just doesn't feel right."

"Because it isn't.
Aedus is inside somewhere shooting people with sleeping potions,
Corrin is in the bathhouse waiting to have his fate decided, I'm
sore as a cat with a cut tail, and Gael is lying here on the ground
with his head in the lap of a woman he hates. What could be
right?"

Yenic chewed the
inside of his cheek thoughtfully, but finally sighed and gave in.
She watched him leave, thinking how peculiar he would look to the
citizens of Sarum with his chest bare, tattaus running up one side
and beneath his arm. He stood out in other ways too. Most of Sarum
was fair – as Yuri's original tribe was fair and large, but Yenic's
fairness was different. He was wiry strong, not broad like Yuri's
people. Her people. Well, half her people. And he was much
shorter.

Still. That wasn't
all of it. The people of Sarum, original and captured and enslaved,
had all adopted an air. They seemed to know subconsciously that
they were from within and went about their business as though no
danger could touch them. In a word, they were oblivious.

The soldiers were
somewhat different. They were wary, but they too expected the city
to keep them safe from those without. Yenic, however, stepped
lightly, bounded where he could, as though in one movement he could
avoid sudden danger. He never took a straight route. She watched
him seeming to meander through the throngs and clusters of people,
but was decidedly intent on his direction. He never swung his arms.
He had an economy of movement that spoke of a warrior's training,
but he had something else that the Sarum warriors did not.
Something she couldn't name.

She thought back
to the time beneath the early morning sun, back at the oasis, when
Aedus had gone off and they'd thought she was just foraging. She
could easily remember the feel of his hands on her skin, the taste
of his mouth with its lingering sweetness of honey and peaches, how
filled with need she was to have him closer even though they were
already pressed hard against each other.

She felt as though
someone was watching her.

"What are you
doing?"

She looked down
into Gael's face. Yes. Someone was. She thought her face must be
burning red.

"Sleep well?" She
asked him and tried not to compare the eyes she saw beneath hers to
the honeyed eyes that had looked into her own just moments before.
Tried and failed. She wasn't sure whose were more captivating. She
told herself it didn't matter.

Gael groaned and
rolled onto his side. "I wasn't sleeping."

"Of course not. I
snore when I'm awake too."

He glared at her
and tried to get up, grabbed his head and weaved back and
forth.

"Careful," she
said. "You've not been awake long."

He didn't open his
eyes, but his tone told her if he did, his nasty glare would not
have left. "I told you, I was not asleep. I don't sleep."

"Ever."

"When I need it,
yes. But not on duty."

"You must have
needed it, then," she said and thought she shouldn't have pushed
him so. He obviously had no idea about Aedus.

He struggled to
his feet and towered over her, looking down. She thought he would
reach out to help her up, but then he took a deliberate step
backward.

"I don't feel
right," he said. "What did you do to me?"

She scrabbled
around the dirt to find the quill, then lifted it for him to see.
"We found you with this in your neck."

He looked down at
it, confused.

"It's a porcupine
–"

"I know what it
is," he snapped. "What was it doing in my – oh." His head lay back
on his neck. "Now I remember. That boy."

"Aedus," Alaysha
said. "Girl, you mean." Aedus could easily be mistaken for a boy,
she supposed, especially if she had muddied her hair up again.

Gael shook his
head. "Not a girl. I've seen Aedus. I know what she looks like.
There was a boy lurking around the doors. I didn't pay him much
mind, but I did watch him a little."

"A warrior is
always aware."

"Right. But inside
the city, well, usually you can let some of your guard down…"

"But given the
attack –"

"I trust
nothing."

"So what about the
boy?"

"He was drawing in
the dirt just off to the side of the doors." Gael pointed toward
the other side, and even as he did, was setting over to inspect the
area. Alaysha looked down to see what appeared to be a small map.
An e X marked next to a horizontal line in a big circle.

"That must be
you," she said to him, sticking her toe toward the X.

He made a
thoughtful sound. "The boy was pointing my spot out to
someone."

"Aedus." It made
no sense, but Yenic seemed so sure she was just up to more
mischief. She had a predilection for having fun at another's
expense. She'd let Yenic wear the dreamer's worm just for a
chuckle. Alaysha studied Gael's face, wondering what he might have
done to Aedus to incur her angst.