Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

23. RHYDIAN

23

RHYDIAN

B lack ink coated my hands, sunk into the whorls of my fingertips, each line a plunging of the shovel into the dirt. The digging of a grave I was unable to provide for them except on parchment. Twenty-seven graves I was unable to dig. Twenty-seven lives that were my responsibility. Twenty-seven lives that would now be nothing but faces on a wall.

I’d spent hours drawing them, ingraining their faces into memory as my fingers sketched their likenesses. They were owed that much. Too many faces had been lost to memory, too many names forgotten in the last five centuries. A prison that never stopped had no time to remember its prisoners. But someone had to.

And it was a much-needed distraction.

I pinned number twenty-seven to the wall above my desk. A young man named Yaron. He’d been a Spindle who sang the most beautiful Lycoan hymns. He’d been a passenger for two months. This was his second Hunt.

One day, when this was all over, and the survivors could look up and bathe in the sun, with grass beneath their bare feet, and no death sentence around their necks, I would make sure that they remembered those names. A wall, a monument to those lost on their path to freedom.

A harsh hand knocked on my door. It wasn’t necessary but the Runners insisted on giving me my privacy some days. Today, the day I learned my "wife" was a T'eiryash, was one of them.

The door slid open revealing Wade’s broad frame, the corridor light turning his hair a burning shade of red not unlike the shade of his foster sister’s embers. Gala. She often joked Wade was more Kindling than her, given that temper of his. His gaze lifted to the drawings on the wall momentarily before flicking to me. The expression on his face was the same one he had worn days earlier when he’d informed us why someone had died by his hand.

I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.

“Just tell me if I have to make an excuse for your behaviour to the council?” I asked him as I packed up the box of charcoal they had gifted me for my seventeenth name day, more than half of the contents gone.

Wade shuffled his feet on the wooden floors. His pulse was faster than usual. “It’s not me this time.”

I turned, not entirely surprised. The other Runners hadn’t exactly been calm these last few weeks. Not with the missions being called off. They were all antsy. Letting off steam in The Fight Hall hadn’t been enough. They’d all been requesting to join the Hunts. ‘Killing one Hunter at a time’, was all that was keeping them in check since the mission to the Old Capital was called off.

“Who then?” Amida was a possibility, since the loss of her sister, the purple-haired Slyph had begun to turn callous, taking too many risks on the runs. Her husband, Jordry, was all that was keeping her stable. But I wouldn’t put it past Lex to pick a fight. Four months was a long time for someone to be aboard the train when they were collarless. That’s how long he’d been confined to the rail, ordered to remain with his twin sister Lera since the mission had been put on hold. Filora didn’t want to risk him crossing through enemy territory without a safe house established. And we’d lost five Runners when the last one had been found by the Kensillan Army. We couldn’t risk both our Skin Weavers, let alone just one.

Wade’s mouth set into a hard line. “Eleen. She’s going to fight your wife.”

I was not in the mood for one of their pranks. “My wife? Eleen is going to fight Rieka?” It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t at all terrifying. After what I saw Rieka do to that Hunter, I really hoped he was joking. Eleen’s dislike of my "wife" was well known amongst all the Runners, but challenging her to a fight, over our issues—

Fuck!

I had told them all in the meeting not two hours ago that Rieka was a T'eiryash. And I made it abundantly clear that Rieka had no control over her taint. It was the reason she wasn’t a fighter, why I insisted on volunteering for The Hunt to protect her after returning so soon from a run, and why I wanted them to be careful with their thoughts around her.

I couldn’t have them revealing resistance intelligence unknowingly to a woman who was going to fall into enemy hands in a few months. Not that I told them that last part.

All I confirmed was that as a T'eiryash, she had the unusual capacity to converse without speaking aloud. I spoke nothing of her ability to speak Gods' Tongue. And as expected, they didn't ask.

Wade finally nodded in acknowledgement of my question.

“And why the fuck would Eleen challenge my wife to a fight when I had strictly forbidden anyone from approaching Rieka so soon after her Hunt?” Wade had never been afraid of me, he thought I was human after all, but I didn’t fail to notice the slightest uptick in his heart rate when my voice rose.

The last thing I wanted was for my men to think my ability to make decisions was compromised.

“Wade?” I asked calmly.

His shoulders relaxed as he spoke. “Something about Eleen taking an unmarked smoking pouch Rieka claims is hers.”

Fights were a regular occurrence. They were the only sure-fire way that disagreements could be dealt with on the train. It was why passengers turned up to fight training every day, why they took the time to learn skills from one another. Not only to survive out there but because if one was willing to fight for something small, even if it was a knife, imagine what they could do when their life was on the line.

No one questioned a fight. And no one could stop a fight. Not when both parties had agreed to the match willingly.

That was my only chance to stop this. To hope that one of those women wasn’t doing this willingly and I wouldn’t have to roll her body off the train in a supply sack.

A crowd had fully formed by the time I arrived in The Fight Hall and Tomas was already waiting in the corner of the ring for the two women to step in. Bets were being circulated throughout the room in Eleen’s favour, especially since most here had witnessed or heard of her win against her current opponent during practice only yesterday. Eleen wasn’t even in her favoured corner, which indicated to me that she was overly confident in this fight.

If I didn’t trust the woman with my life, I would have compelled her out of the ring myself.

Her eyes told me she wasn’t going to hear reason. But I had to try. “You’re still going to fight her even after what I told you?”

Lera ignored us both in that stoic way of hers as she continued to strap Eleen’s hands for the fight. “All I see is a woman,” Eleen said, her eyes focused on the other corner of the mat.

“Please don’t do this. You can pull out of the fight. There is still time.” Eleen remained silent, determination etched into every line of her face.

“No, she can’t.” My attention snapped to Lera, her gaze remaining on Eleen’s body, tapping it down to ensure her garments held no secret weapons.

Lera continued nonchalantly. “Rieka asked for the fight. Eleen accepted.”

The noise of the crowd increased as Rieka entered the mat, her bunkmates forming her entourage in the opposition’s corner. Saska as I now knew his name, the Pazgari who had killed a quarter of the Hunters in the Deadwood was whispering in her ear as he kept his eyes on Eleen. I dreaded what he was telling her, giving her ideas on top of what I knew she was already capable of. The tall tan male on her other side, with the keen eyes of a Drake strapped her hands as the red-headed she-wolf patted Rieka down, recently versed on the rules about on-train combat matches it seemed. Rieka’s heart was beating the fastest of the four. Her other companions, the Haltian Scholar, the Deogn Smith with the sad eyes and the sundered Terrestrial girl who’d spoken during training yesterday stayed back on the crowd edge, the girl squeezing the Smith’s hand so tightly his knuckles turned white. They were just as amped up as the rest of the crowd.

“Why did you even come, Rhydian?” Eleen said, her voice laced with the same hurt that had been there the day Oric left. “Afraid I’ll kill your wife?”

“No. I’m afraid she’ll kill you.”

She finally looked me in the eyes, hurt etched across every inch of her face. “Where was this concern for my wellbeing when you decided to send Oric away?”

“I sent him on a mission,” I said, trying to get her to see reason, but knowing she had none where Oric was concerned. Since the moment she’d met him, Eleen would have no other.

She snapped back. “You sent him on some loyalty test because apparently my word isn’t good enough.”

I wanted to say yes. That of course I sent him on a loyalty test. Oric was born in the Armistice Line, he had no allegiance to anyone. My trust in him had to be earned, regardless of the fact he claimed to have chosen our side. Had it not been for Eleen, and my trust in her, I would have never entrusted him with a mission so important. Instead, I said, “Is that what this is, my wife’s loyalty test?”

“You have your methods, I have mine!” Eleen’s jaw clenched and returned her attention to Rieka, no longer willing to speak with me.

Lera moved up beside me. “It’s your wife you should really talk to. She instigated the fight because of what the pouch contained.”

As my intelligence officer, it shouldn’t have surprised me that she had obtained the real reason Rieka had asked for this fight. Lera presented me with the pouch. Eleen had given her proxy to hold the item until the result of the match was announced. It was nothing more than a leather smoking pouch. Setrali made.

Lera pulled on the ends, releasing the magnetic clasp. Inside was a small wadding of what appeared to be hair. Perhaps fur was the correct term, held together with a thin leather string.

“She claimed it belonged to one she called brother.”

Her brother. The one who abandoned his post. He was a wolf?

I caught Rieka’s gaze as I looked to her corner.

She said nothing as I walked the distance of the mat. It felt like miles. The floor turning to quicksand as each foot touched down. The weight of our last conversation, a boulder on my shoulders.

“Can I have a word with my wife?” I asked her companions when I finally stood before her. They gave us as much privacy as the space allowed.

“Are you sure about this?” I tried to sound like the caring husband I needed to be.

“You should know something about me Rhydian.” Rieka’s eyes bore into me. “I never make decisions I’m not willing to follow through on.” That was as much a statement as it was a reminder of our deal.

“You understand the penalty for using your taint in a fight is exile?” Using one’s taint had always led to discussions of unfair advantages. Someone long ago had decided that a fair fight had to be physical. It might not have been entirely equal between opponents, Brutes were always physically stronger than Fabricants or Sparks, but the latter could always outpace a weightier opponent, and improve their skills to win a fight. Those who broke those laws were sent to their death, banished from the train at the nearest station, and forced to survive until their collar killed them because they were called for a Hunt they could never run in.

“Yes.” Rieka’s response answered both of my previous questions. She bounced on her toes in anticipation.

“You told me yourself. You’re not capable of controlling your taint,” I said, our conversation still raw in my mind, her confession on replay like a broken audio spinner.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of..” Then aloud with a false tone of care, she added, “Thanks for your concern husband .”

I could see a war raging behind those eyes. It wasn’t hard to fathom half was because of me. “Is the pouch really that important to you?”

Her voice was steady, her gaze steadfast. “Yes.”

I took a step back. “Then I wish you steady ground. Wife.” Then, taking another breath, I made a choice, and I told her. “I cannot risk losing you Rieka. If you lose control, I will not hesitate to use my taint on you.”

Rieka’s hand cupped my cheek, her thumb gently caressing. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to mine, kissing me softly. “If you wish it. Husband.”