New to the story? Read chapter 1 here.
Content Warning: This chapter contains violence, death and a threat of sexual violence.
Chapter 2
It gasps in a breath but makes no other sound. Years of brutal training taught it to suffer in silence. Even so, it knows the longer it waits, the worse the pain will become. Anger fills it, and through gritted teeth, it hisses, “I obey.”
The burning fades to a slight heat. It tells the messenger, “Wait,” and shoves the door shut.
Downstairs it goes, snuffing the candle in the kitchen as it passes. Celil’s ghost stands at the door, begging for treats. Thankfully, the boy’s whining voice is as faint as the other ghosts. It goes past the pantry and servant’s hall to the wine cellar. A pull on a wall sconce opens the wall. It pulls it shut behind it and navigates the inky dark stairs and hallway behind it by touch. It takes the keys from their hidden niche and unlocks the treasure room.
Cleansing a House usually included robbing it, but the Dirarchs of Houses Glarin, Tralique, and Paskoni didn’t want House Kilcharni gone. They wanted the House ruined, and the rest of the city to witness it. Their soldiers caught the heir, Talint, in the streets just before the cleansing. They’d made him watch as House Kilcharni died. Talint saw his father slaughtered in the library, his mother burning alive in the parlour, and heard little Anilia’s screams from the upstairs hall.
He begged them to stop. They’d told him they’d spare him if he commanded the last survivors to stop fighting. Talint screamed out the words, “Stop! I command you!”
And because it had no choice, it did.
The Master of Death died under a hail of crossbow bolts. It stood there, useless, as they stripped Talint, tied him to a tree, and gelded him. They told him to use the house’s money to drink itself to death, and to keep his cursed servant as long as he lived to witness to his shame and humiliation.
And so, It goes to the money chest, finds a string of twenty silver sinet coins by touch and ties it around its neck. It also pulls out ten pil, small pewter coins, to buy food because Talint didn’t say that it could not. It locks everything, goes upstairs, steps out of the manor and closes the door behind it. The messenger looks at the broken windows and the missing roof, and snorts with contempt. The messenger leads it through the limestone-paved streets to the nearest public dock. A line of boats waits for passengers, despite the evening shadows growing long. The City of Seven Walls rarely sleeps, especially the businesses on the delta islands.
House Tishia sits on the delta’s fashionable side, facing the right bank. The boatman they hire pushes his small rowboat off the dock and heads upriver, eschewing the tight channels and thick traffic for the clearer, wider, open river.
The river gives the best view of the city, if one ignores the foul, sewage-filled waters and the ghosts floating beneath the surface, mouths wide and hands reaching for help that cannot come. Painted limestone manors line the Left bank; red, blue, and yellow walls shining in the sinking sun. Boats parked on their docks wave their flags lazily in the slight breeze. It watches them until the boat passes the last island and the boatman swings his vessel out into the main current.
Three hundred years ago, House Kilcharni built its manor on the great river Kylp’s left bank. Engineering reports showed that dredging the left side of the delta was the practical project. The Dirarch thought to build a port, and expand the House’s fortune beyond measure. Unfortunately, the wealthier Houses built their manors on the right bank. At greater expense, effort, and loss of life, the Council ordered the delta’s right side dredged. This left House Kilcharni with a maze of delta islands and narrow channels between it and the open water. The event was still lamented during every family gathering.
The boat swings south, bringing the right bank’s towers and grand manors into view. Though the Houses living on the left bank are far from poor, the right bank Houses exude wealth. Their towers rise high, as do the Council Chambers’ copper domes. It had been the palace two hundred years ago, before the Houses decided they had no use for kings. The domes shine bright, polished by an army of workers to remind the city where the heart of its power sat. The giant black stone bridge a mile north looms above the river. The prince who’d founded the city had the bridge built with a high arch, so sailing ships could pass beneath. Further north, the tops of the towers that mark the colleges where priests and scholars studied the God’s laws and the world’s wonders. Beyond that, lines of warehouses and businesses line the river.
The boat picks up speed until the boatman steers out of the current and pulls up to the public dock with ease. It gets out, pays a pewter pil, and follows the messenger up the boardwalk. The public dock lies fifty metres from House Tishia. Unlike the stone manors and streets on the river banks, the buildings on the islands are wood, connected by boardwalks. They are painted as brightly as those on the the banks, and House Tishia brighter than most. Standing four storeys tall, the building glows in red and pink that matches its servant’s kilt. The small homes and open-fronted shops between the House and the dock are painted in bright greens and blues and the occasional shocking yellow. The smell of grilling fish rises above the delta’s swamp-rot stink and the sewage stench of the river. It wants to eat, but pain flares in its chest, reminding it to carry out its orders.
Just outside House Tishia sits a small church, painted green with the God’s bright yellow twelve-pointed star above the door. The Silagh—priest—is a tall, thin woman with greying hair pulled back in a braid, wearing a simple undyed robe. She sits outside on a bench, enjoying the sun. She spots it and waves, calling, “Hello, servant of House Kilcharni.”
“Greetings, Silagh Lacinth,” it says, bowing. It likes Lacinth, whose friendliness extends to everyone on the island. More than a few times, Talint left it outside while he debauched himself. The silagh had seen it standing there, and offered it tea. It never told her what it was. The God did not like cursed creatures, and gave no sanctuary to them, and no place in the afterlife.
“Your master’s here again, I take it,” Lacinth says. “How does he fare?”
“As well as possible,” it says, shrugging, “given the circumstances.”
Lacinth nods. Everyone in the city had heard about the Cleansing. Such things were rare, and the source of gossip for years to follow. “How fare you, servant?”
It puts on a smile. “As well as possible, given the circumstances.”
Lacinth chuckles. “May the God bless you and their light shine on you so the circumstances grow better. Stop by on your way out, if your master allows you.”
Rather than blurting that the God will see it in darkness for all eternity, it gives a quick bow, saying, “Thank you.”
The messenger leads it around to the servant entrance of House Tishia and leads it up the servant stairs to the third floor’s private entertainment rooms. Tall, wide mirrors stand in each corner of Talint’s room and the floor is as soft as a bed. Talint and two young men it doesn’t recognise sit on a pile of cushions, wearing bright pink and red robes. Pipes hang from their lips, and drinks sit in their hands. The room smells of sex and alcohol and clohalc—a smoked weed that excites the mind and ignites the body’s desires.
“The thing appears,” Talint declares. “Money.”
It gives him the string of sinets from its neck. Talint grabs it with a hand gone soft in the six months since the Cleansing, and not just from the gelding. The man continuously pursues his destruction with drink, food, drugs and, once he discovered that what he had left worked, sex. Everything else he’d cast aside.
“You said it was different,” complains one of his companions. “I see a pretty boy.”
“Wrong, Barthos.” Talint says, and takes a drag of his pipe.
The second man rises to his feet. He looms over it, pale and blond, his pupils wide with clohalc and his breath stinking of alcohol. “A girl, then?”
“Not that either, Grantinid.” Talint smiles. “Strip, cursed thing. I command it.”
Searing heat burns its chest. It doesn’t move, and shows no expression, save a quick in-drawn breath. The burning grows stronger with every passing moment.
“It’s trying to defy me,” Talint says, amusement as bitter as his laughter filling his voice. “I command you, strip.”
With the second order, the burning grows as sharp and bright as if someone had sent air from bellows over a forge. It gasps, but manages to stay upright and silent.
“I’m surprised it doesn’t kill you in your sleep,” Grantinid says, Making Barthos chuckle.
“My father ordered it to hit my older brother once, to teach it the penalty for hurting anyone of the House. It spent three days screaming in agony.” His jaws sets, and his eyes narrow. “Which will happen again if I repeat myself a third time. Now, be a good thing and strip while you’re still able to stand.”
And because Talint will give the command if it refuses, and only acquiescence can relieve its agony, it hisses, “I obey.”
The pain recedes but doesn’t go away, the way it would have if it had obeyed the first time. It steps out of its sandals and drops its cape. It takes off the belt with its fore-arm length daggers, making Talint’s friends stare. The kilt follows, then the shirt, and last, the loincloth. The pain vanishes, leaving a dull ache behind.
It straightens and catches a glimpse of its reflection.. The black, short hair on its head will not grow longer. Its eyebrows and eyelashes are thin. No other hair grows on its body. Its skin is smooth save for the many scars marring it, and so pale it burns in sunlight. Strong, wiry muscles running beneath its flesh. It has no nipples, no genitals. An iron ring it cannot remove sits on the second finger of its right hand.
Talint’s friends stare, fascinated.
“It’s got a piss-hole but nothing else,” says Grantinid. “Does it have an asshole?”
“Of course,” Talint says. “Everything pisses and shits.”
“Was it a boy or a girl before?” asks Barthos.
“Why?” Talint sneers, “Do you want to fuck it?”
It tenses and measures the distance to Barthos throat, but doesn’t move.
“What purpose do slaves serve if not that?” Barthos says, making Gantinid laugh.
“It protects me.” Talint says, his words bitter and humourless. “This thing is the Death of House Kilcharni.”
The men stumble away from it, surprise and fear on their face, and Talint laughs again. The sound turns into a cough and bright red blood spurts from his mouth. He stares at the stain on his robe, eyes going wide. Then dozens of spurting wounds erupt in his flesh and he screams in agony.
Thank you for reading!
If you are enjoying this story and would like to support the author, there are four things you can do:
1. Buy me a coffee!
Whether a monthly membership or a single donation, your support will help me write longer, faster and better. Also, monthly supporters get discounts, free books and more. Buy me a coffee today!
2. Buy my books!
I have two great series, The Thomas Flarety Stories and The Stalker Chronicles. Pop over to my books page to check them out.
3. Join my mailing list!
Subscribers get first access to new chapters, as well as a free copy of The Trials of Abyowith, first book in The Stalker Chronicles. They are also the first to hear about new books and events, and have a chance to get free books. Click here to join.
4. Tell your friends!
Share on the social media of your choice or email the link to this page to your friends. The more people who read, the better!