New to the story? Read chapter 1 here.
Content Warning: This chapter, surprisingly, is clear. The next one’s a doozy though.
Chapter 6
Dwingtal, Master of Death for House Talique, walks away, his Deaths following him. It watches, gasping with exhaustion and relief. Around it, people protest and argue. Two days locked in the house means one day hungry for most people. Some complain about the unfairness, others demand to know what disease. The soldiers spread out, holding their spears sideways, and start advancing. Council soldiers are not known for their forbearance, and nobody tests their mood. A few householders scurry to collect water before the soldiers force them inside. Others walk away, swearing or praying. It forces its exhausted body into motion, joining the crowd leaving the square.
The brand on its chest grows hotter, the feeling like too-warm bathwater against its skin: too hot for comfort; not painful enough to make it cry out. The curse wants it to carry out its commands and doesn’t care if it survives.
“There’s no damn disease,” someone grumbles. Several others agreed.
“Yes, there is,” a woman says. “My sister heard it started in a brothel on the island.”
“Why was her sister at the brothel?” mutters another woman to her companion, and both snicker.
“My cousin was bringing in produce,” says a third woman. “He saw soldiers at the seventh wall. Maybe it began there.”
“My brother is on night watch,” says a second man. “He says it’s spreading in the Houses.”
“Good,” another man says, glaring at the armed men behind them. “With luck it will spread and take all the Council bastards.”
It escapes crowd and heads for the manor. Soldiers fill the streets, yelling for everyone to go indoors and driving in anyone who hesitates. It reaches House Kilcharni’s side gate and stands there, eyes searching the rooftops, ears listening for unfamiliar sounds. When it is positive no Deaths lurk nearby, it slips into the yard.
In the kitchen, it strips, wipes away the blood and sweat, grabs a cookie, and goes in to the deep basement. The darkness wraps it like a blanket, calling it to surrender to its exhaustion. But its burning skin reminds it the curse doesn’t care. It goes to the work table and reaches for flint and steel.
Brights sparks rise, dazzling its eyes. One lands in the waiting bowl of paper scraps. It grasps the corner of the paper, blows until the spark becomes flame, and applies it to the tallow lamp. The wick catches, sending dim yellow light across the training room.
Given its proximity to the river, the windowless room is surprisingly dry. The ceiling is high enough for the Master of Death to swing a staff without hitting anything except his student. A raised wood floor for rolling and tumbling and fighting covers two-thirds of the room. Two practice dummies, one for daggers, a second for unarmed combat, stand on posts. A third dummy, for grappling, lies against the wall near the work table with its shelves of poisons and books.
In the far corner, lies its small trunk and thin rug. It doesn’t own them, it knows, nor anything else. Any money it has; the House gave it. Any meal it eats is the House’s food. Any piece of kindness it receives is by the House’s grace. The house owns everything, including it.
The anger that thought brings gives it energy enough to put on clean training clothes and leather gloves from the chest.
It and climbs on the table to reach three books on the top shelf. They are hand-written and dozens of years old: Methods of Murder, Killing Diseases, and Common Causes of Death. It memorized them before Silinie turned nine. After, its master made it spend weeks helping priests prepare the impoverished dead for burial, until it knew at a glance how they died.
It checks the books anyway, to be certain it hasn’t missed something.
No weapon or poison in Methods of Murder killed the way Talint and House Talique’s Dirarch died. It opens Killing Diseases and checks the Red Death. It finds similarities: coughing blood, blisters breaking and releasing bloody froth. The Red Death’s symptoms took days to appear, not seconds, and Talint’s skin burst open without blisters.
It skims the other diseases. None match. The last book, Common Causes of Death, covered accidents, injuries, overdoses, and excess. It finds nothing. It puts the books away to discourage the rats from chewing their poisoned pages, removes the gloves, snuffs the lamp.
It goes to the second floor, climbing the ruined great staircase. Like the one below, the hallway has marble flooring. The fire destroyed the floor’s supports, though, leaving gaping holes. It walks on the remaining safe tiles to reach the wide-windowed classroom where House Kilcharni educated its children. Inside it sees the burned desks and tables, the charred bookshelves, and the ash piles that were once instruments.
It pushes a panel and a hidden door, painted to match the stone wall, clicks open. The room behind holds a broom and a mop, shelves for linens and pots of sweet-smelling herbs. A pump brings water from far below, a bucket catches it, and a drain returns whatever falls. The servants came every morning, gathered their tools, and made the second floor spotless.
It learned mathematics, literature, languages, history, and politics by listening to the children’s lessons through the wall.
It started at five years old—if its age matches Silinie’s—sitting with the Master of Death, mouth gagged to keep it silent. If it moved, its master pinched it hard enough to bruise. By age six, it sat alone, knowing stillness and silence protected it from pain. During the day, it listened. At night, it snuck books out, memorizing them by the tallow lamp’s thin light and returning them before morning.
The servants received a one sinit reward if they caught it. It received a whipping. It quickly learned to remain unseen.
Once inside, though, neither servants nor family were allowed to disturb it. The closet became a place of respite. Even when its schooling stopped it sometimes retreated to the closet to find silence and solitude. It sinks to the floor, looks at the sky—the fire burned the ceiling above away—and thinks.
What do I know?
The Dirarch of House Talique died the same way as Talint. Probably the Dirarchs of Glarin and Paskoni, too. What killed them? Why? Why attack them tonight? Why didn’t Silinie play the harp once she left the classroom?
It shakes its head, trying to clear the exhaustion that makes its mind stray and its thoughts disjointed. It doesn’t work. The brand pulses the curse’s displeasure, but even that stop it eyes growing too heavy.
When they snap open, the sky above is dark, and voices fill the manor.
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