He looked down at her, drinking in the sight of her compassion, the familiar ache dispelling his numbness with a desperate need and hopeless shame. “I am a murderer,” he said, forming each word with cold precision.
“ No…”
“ I am a murderer.” He gently pulled her hand away and kicked Spit into a walk, guiding him through the gate and into the city.
Chapter 9
He stayed in his room for two days, slumped fully clothed on his bunk. Janril knocked and left food outside his door but he ignored it. Caenis, Barkus and Frentis each came in turn to call through the door but he barely heard them. He felt no need of sleep, no hunger, no thirst. There was only Dentos and the arrowhead, and the song, the great unknowable song of the wolf like a deafening echo in his mind. And the truth of course, the hateful truth. I am a murderer.
He remembered when he had gone to Dentos to ask for his presence on the mission. “You’re the best horse archer we have…” he had begun but Dentos was already packing his kit.
“ Nortah was better,” he said, stringing his bow.
“ Nortah’s dead.”
Dentos had simply smiled and for the first time Vaelin realised he had never believed his lie about Nortah’s fate. How much more had he known? What other secrets had he kept? All of his knowledge gone in an instant, stolen by an arrow loosed by a stranger who probably thought he had felled the Hope Killer himself. Vaelin wondered if the man had died happy under the hail of Cumbraelin arrows, perhaps expecting a hero’s welcome from the gods. It must have been a terrible disappointment.
Towards evening of the second day his attention was finally drawn by a scratching at the door, accompanied by an plaintive whine. He blinked, gazing at the dim room with blurred eyes, fingers scraping the stubble on his chin, smelling his own stink. “I need a bath,” he muttered, rising to open the door.
Scratch’s weight bore him down effortlessly, his harsh tongue scraping over face and chin with desperate affection. “Alright daft dog!” he groaned, pushing the slave-dog away with some difficulty. “I’m alright.”
“ Really?” Sherin was standing in the doorway, arms folded, her expression an echo of the severity he remembered from their first meeting. “Because you look terrible.”
She turned and descended the steps, returning a few minutes later with a cloth and a steaming bowl of water. She closed the door and sat on the bed as he stripped to the waist and washed, Scratch’s head in her lap as she rubbed the fur behind his ears. He could feel her gaze on his torso, knowing her eyes lingered on his scars, sensing her sorrow. “Nothing I didn’t earn, sister,” he told her, reaching for his razor. “All of it, and more besides.”
“ So you hate yourself now?” There was an edge of anger to her tone. Clearly her bitterness at his beating of Brother Commander Iltis was taking a while to fade.
“ The things I’ve done. This war…” He trailed off, closing his eyes briefly before lathering his face and lifting the razor to his skin.
“ Here.” Sherin rose and moved to his side, taking the razor from him. “You haven’t slept, your hands are unsteady.” She pulled over a stool and made him sit. “Relax, I’ve done this more times than I can remember.” He had to admit many barbers would envy the skill with which she wielded the razor, sliding the blade over his skin with deft precision, her healer’s hands gentle and soothing. For a moment he was lost in the scent and the closeness of her, the grief and self-loathing vanished by this new intimacy. He knew he should tell her to stop, that this was inappropriate, but found himself too intoxicated to care.
“ There.” She moved back, smiling down at him, a finger tracing over his chin. “Much better.”
Possessed by a sudden and nearly irresistible impulse to pull her close again, he reached instead for the cloth to wipe away the remaining soap. “Thank you sister.”
“ Brother Dentos was a good man,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“ He was the son of a whore who grew up in a place where everyone hated him. For him there was no other role in this world than to fight and die in service to the Order. But you’re right, he was a good man, and he deserved a longer life and a better death.”
“ Why did you come here, Vaelin?” Her voice was soft, the anger gone now, her tone merely sorrowful. “You detest this war, I can see it. Your skills, like mine, were not meant for this. We are supposed to serve a Faith that defends against greed and cruelty. What are we defending here? What did the king promise or threaten to force you to this?”
The impulse to lie, to continue to wallow in secrets as he had for years, was only the faintest whisper now, a nagging sense of stepping too far on an uncharted path, easily overridden by the need to tell her. If he couldn’t hold her at least he could find some comfort in confidence. “He discovered my father has become a Denier. The Ascendant sect, I believe. Whatever that is.”
“ We leave our ties of blood behind when we give ourselves in service to the Faith.”
“ Do we? Did you? Your compassion was born somewhere, sister. In those streets you came from, amongst those beggared people you try so hard to save. Do we ever really leave anything behind?”
She closed her eyes, face downcast, unspeaking.
“ I’m sorry,” he said. “Your past is your own. I don’t mean to…”
“ My mother was a thief,” she said, eyes open now, meeting his gaze, a harsh unfamiliar accent colouring her tone. “Finest dipper the quarter ever saw. Hands like lightning, could have a ring off a merchant’s finger quicker than a snake takes a rat. Never knew my father, she said he was a soldier, lost to the wars, but I knew she done some whorin’ before she learned the trade. She taught me, y’see, said I had the hands for it.” She looked down at her hands, the deft, slender fingers clenching. “I was her darlin’ little thief, she said, and a thief never needs to be a whore.
“ Turns out I wasn’t quite the thief she thought I was. Fat old rich man with a fat old wife managed to corner me when I lifted her brooch. Was beating on me with his walking stick when my mum knifed him. ‘No-one hits my Sherry!’ she said. She could’ve run but she stayed.” She crossed her arms, hugging herself. “She stayed for me. She was still stabbin’ away when the Guard came. They hanged her the next day. I was eleven years old.
“ After the hanging I sat down and waited to die. Couldn’t steal any more y’see, just couldn’t. And it was all I knew how to do. No mum, no trade. I was done. Next morning a pretty lady in a grey robe asked if I needed help.”
He couldn’t recall standing or pulling her close, but found her head was on his chest, breath catching as she fought down tears. “I’m sorry sister…”
She breathed deeply, her sobs fading, lifting her face, a small wry smile on her lips, whispering “I’m not your sister,” before she pressed them against his.
“ You taste,” Sherin’s tongue played over his chest, “of sand and sweat.” She wrinkled her nose. “And you smell of smoke.”
“ I’m sorry…”
She giggled a little, raising herself up to kiss his cheek before pressing her nakedness against him, her head resting on his chest. “I’m not complaining.”
His hands played over the slim smoothness of her shoulders, drawing a sigh of pleasure. “I had heard that one had to be experienced at this to find it truly enjoyable,” he said.
“ I heard that true devotion to the Faith would blind me to the lure of such pleasures.” She kissed him again, longer this time, tongue probing his lips. “It appears you can’t believe all you hear.”
They had lain together for hours, making love with urgent whispered intimacy, Scratch posted outside the door to discourage visitors. The wonderful, electrifying feel of her against him, the caress of her breath on his neck as he moved in her, was overpowering, amazing. Despite the grief and the guilt and knowledge of what waited beyond this room, for now he was, perhaps for the first time he could remember, truly happy.