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Content Warning: This chapter contains violence and death.
Chapter 3
It runs to Talint, heedless of its nudity. Blood streams from Talint’s body. He coughs, gags, and spits red. It turns him on his side and blood pours from his mouth. Oozing holes line his back, too. Talint gasps in a breath.
He’s dying, it realizes. He’s dying and I’ll be free of him.
It cradles Talint’s head, holding him as he convulses and weeps. Talint’s companions stumble from him, crying out in fear. Their shouts raise the House, and heavy footsteps race down the hallway to the room.
“Bastards,” Talint gasps. “Bastards have killed me.”
“Shh,” it says, trying to make its voice as soothing as possible. “I have you.”
“Fuck you,” Talint tries to sit up, can’t, and settles for grabbing its wrist. “Avenge me, useless bastard. Kill them.”
“I will,” it lies, knowing the curse dies with Talint.
“Bullshit. Fucker. Hate you.” Talint pulls in a breath and lets out a shout, “Fucking hurts!”
Talint’s blood pours over its legs as it cradles the dying man. The door bursts open. Two guards step in and Gratinid and Barthos push out past them. The guards stare, and one whispers, “Red Plague.”
The guards turn and run, either to tell the Mirarch or escape. It knows it should follow. What happened to Talint was murder, not plague, and it doesn’t want to be stuck on the island, its curse burning it alive, while the council figures that out. It tries to rise, but Talint grips its wrist harder.
“You kill whoever killed me, fucker,” he demands, his face twisted with fury and agony. He pulls in a shuddering breath. Too late, it realizes that it should have covered Talint’s mouth, should have stopped his last words: “Avenge me. I command it.”
The brand on its chest burns and it tears free of Talint’s grip and shoves him away. The man’s heels drum against the soft floor and his arms flail in a final convulsion, before he goes still.
Then Talint’s ghost stands in the room, staring with naked hatred and demanding, “Avenge me, you fucker.”
It glares back. The burning should fade, now that Talint is dead. Instead, the heat grows stronger. Still it waits, praying to the God that doesn’t believe it deserves redemption to grant it this one thing, this one time. But the brand burns hotter and its pain grows worse with every passing moment.
It howls in rage and agony and drives its heel against the corpse’s skull. Talint’s head snaps sideways, blood flying from his mouth. The pain doesn’t ease. It keeps howling and kicking, as Talint’s shade yells for revenge. At last, it falls to its knees and slams its fists onto Talint’s corpse. Tears and snot slide down its face as it whispers, “I obey.”
The pain vanishes. It stays where it kneels, naked and bloody, body shaking with fury. Talint’s shade still glares hatred, and will until someone blesses it and sends it away. The brand no longer hurts, just glows with a gentle warmth. As long as it carries out Talint’s command, it won’t grow worse. Once it’s done then the last pain will fade and it will be free of House Kilcharni.
Outside the room it hears shouted orders, fearful cries, and the sound of many feet, shod or otherwise, trying to escape the building. It rises, looks around the room and spots and ewer and basin, with dirty towels on the floor beside it. It washes its body, knowing that it cannot travel the streets naked and covered in blood.
The brand doesn’t grow any hotter, because even its curse knows it’s the truth.
When it’s as clean as a towel-bath can make it, it walks through Talint’s shade; a small, useless act of rebellion. It takes back the coins it gave Talint, dresses, and leaves. Panicked customers crowd the hallways, so it takes the servant stairs outside.
Frantic, terrified men and women fill the boardwalk, stepping on each other in their rush to get away. It pushes through the throng and almost gets knocked into the delta mud by a running old man. Silagh Lacinth spots it as it rights itself and calls to it, asking what happened.
“Talint died,” it says, “coughing blood, with bloody holes in his flesh. They think it’s the Red Plague.”
Lacinth closes her eyes a moment, and her lips move in silent prayer. She asks, “Is it?”
It shakes its head. “The holes appeared suddenly and he died too fast. And his ghost is in the room. That doesn’t happen with death from disease,.”
Lacinth eyes narrow at the mention of the ghost, but she only says, “I am sorry.”
“Me, too.” It’s true, but only because now it can’t escape. It pulls the string of coins from its purse and gives five sinet to Lacinth. “When they’re done panicking, can you lay him to rest and send his shade from this world?”
“Shouldn’t you do that?” she asks, “As the House’s last servant?”
It tastes bile as it says, “No, he gave me a different command before he died.”
She frowns, as if guessing what the command was, and says, “I will lay Talint to rest, once things calm down.”
“Thank you.”
It walks away from the public dock, using the boardwalks and wood bridges to go island to island toward the right bank. The long evening’s last light fades as it walks. The boardwalk is unlit, and the further from the fashionable side of the river, the poorer the inhabitants. Wood homes give way to sail-canvas stretched over wooden frames, then to lines of boats, their owners sleeping on the decks. It passes several plank-and-barrel stalls serving questionable alcohol. At one, the patrons give it a once over, then turn away, deciding a servant isn’t worth the effort. Once it finds a family baking stacks of flatbread inside a clay oven. It gives them a pil and gets three. It eats one-handed, its other hand wrapped around the grip of its dagger. Night is not safe on the islands, and it has no wish to die before it can be free.
Which leads it wonder, who must it kill to avenge Talint?
By full dark, it has hired a boat and landed at the manor. As before, it descends into the deep basement in darkness. By touch and memory, it walks the long hallway past the treasure room to a different, unlocked door. The large room beyond is completely dark, but it walks without stumbling. It knows the space, knows to raise its foot and step onto the wooden training floor, to swerve to avoid the practice dummies. With the ease of long practice it stops and kneels beside the small rug that is its bed and the chest that holds all its belongings. It listens again, but hears only rats in the walls. The rats and it have reached a state of détente: they leave it alone and it gives them the same courtesy.
From its chest it collects its working clothes and a bag that rests tight across its back to carry them. It has three Houses to visit, all on the right bank. If things go well, it will avenge Talint, take as much of House Kilcharni’s gold and silver as it can carry, and leave the city.
If they go wrong, the Houses will torture it to death.
It always expected to die House Kilcharni. It just seems unfair that it still might, with the House now dead.
The night is young enough that people still fill the great stone bridge. Poorer merchants walk in clusters with a lamp-boy leading the way and at least one man-at-arms. Servants walk together. Groups of students glare at groups of clerks, and the carriages of the wealthy push through the crowd with no regard for anyone underfoot.
The bridge’s thick stone railings are full, too. The river is a popular end for those tired of life and their ghosts stand cheek by jowl with others hung from the rail by council order. Each ghost calls or wails or reaches out to the living.
it ignores them, as it always does.
House Talique is the furthest away, on the far side of the city’s second wall, overlooking the new harbour—“new” being more relative than descriptive, since the last princes commissioned it four hundred years ago. House Talique helped build it, and for a while became very wealthy. Then the greater Houses deposed the prince and House Talique fell out of favour. It took another hundred years for them to rise again. They are not yet as affluent as the ten great Houses on the city council, but have ambitions. They also have twenty guards, and a wall around their manor.
It walks on, following the second wall almost to the harbour before slipping into a narrow laneway between buildings. In the dark, tight space it changes into dark grey mottled pants, hooded shirt, and boots and bundles up the servant’s clothes in its sack. Bracing feet and hands on the two buildings, it climbs. At the top, it shifts its grip and pulls itself onto the building’s roof. House Talique’s outer wall stands ten feet high, narrow, and topped with spikes and glass embedded into mortar to discourage people from going over the top. Unlike most Houses, though, Talique’s founder had a fondness for oak trees, and the one in the manor’s yard towers over the walls and buildings.
It takes five steps back, breathes deep and sprints forward, digging its toes into the roof’s edge and jumping. It hits the oak’s biggest branch feet-first, jumps again before its body can realize it’s off balance and lands on the grand treehouse’s roof. It slips down to the treehouse balcony, then runs across the wood and rope bridge connecting it to the manor’s second-floor balcony.
The last time it stood on the bridge was when it was Silinie’s companion, it remembers. It played lookout while she and the second Talique boy kissed and cuddled in the cushion-filled treehouse and their families in the manor pretended not to notice.
Which is how it knows House Talique never locks the balcony door.
The guards heard it, it knows, but that doesn’t matter. If it moves fast, it can avenge Talint and escape before they catch it. It charges forward, drawing its daggers as it races down the hallway, and up the stairs to family’s chambers. Light shines beneath the Dirarch’s study door, which it shoves open without slowing. The man jumps up in surprise as it launches over the desk, yelling, “We didn’t kill him!”
Both its knees smash into his chest, sending him back into his seat and the chair over backward. The Dirarch’s head bounces off the wood floor, and he yelps in pain. It stays on top of him, daggers to his throat, pressing hard.
“You Cleansed my House,” it hissed.
“Yes!” the Dirarch gasps, his hands cradling the back of his head. “And it will die this generation, so why would we kill that scum?”
“To steal what’s left.” Uncertainty twitches inside it; a worm making its belly crawl and itch.
Despite his pain, the Dirarch sneers. “There’s more money in my desk drawer than in your treasure room.”
“Liar.” It pushes the daggers harder against the man’s throat. The skin parts beneath the steel and blood seeps around the blades. From elsewhere in the house an alarm bell sounds, and it knows it doesn’t have long. The Dirarch glares, contempt instead of than fear on his face. “We left him alive because killing was too good for him. Now get off me, Death of House Kil—”
The words become a cough and blood pours from his mouth.
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