Chapter 34 #2
“I once saw a man kill his gally boy because he dropped a barrel of fish when he was unloading a ship down by the docks at the far west of the city where the ships hailing from distant Tymera docked. He hit him so fast and so brutally that his head was dashed against the edge of the ship’s rail and his skull was shattered.
The child couldn’t have been more than ten. Dead just for making a mistake.”
“What did you do?” she breathed, eyes wide and her posture falling unnaturally still.
I shrugged. “Nothing. It wasn’t my business.
But the royal guards did happen to see it too.
I hung about, watching them while lifting coin from marks who crossed my path, expecting them to offer out punishment, a part of me hoping to see the bastard run through then and there for his crime.
It was murder after all. The punishment for that is clear enough in the great empire of Osaria.
A life for a life. Or so they claim. Turns out the only punishment the man faced was the price of a bag of gold kurus offered to the guards to look the other way as he tossed the boy’s body into the Carlell River. ”
My jaw ticked at the memory of that day and the all too clear reminder of what value people like me held within this kingdom which claimed to be the crown jewel of the entire empire.
“You killed him,” Kyra breathed the truth into the room and my lips turned up at the corner as I lifted one shoulder.
“I was on the lookout for a big mark anyway. It occurred to me that a man who could so casually part with a bag of kurus in payment for killing a child was in possession of far more wealth than he could possibly require. So I stalked him through the shadows once he finished his work overseeing the unloading of his ship, followed him all the way to the fifth ring where the wealthy merchants all live in their huge houses, working to lick the arses of the upper Fae and pretending they’re just like them, hoping one day they might be accepted as such.
I found a lot of coin stashed inside a safe beneath the floor of his office – but I needed his assistance in opening it for me.
I will admit he was quite reluctant to part with his riches, but after I had relieved him of most of his teeth and several of his fingers, he found himself more willing to oblige me.
I can’t say that that kind of theft is my usual style, but I felt particularly motivated to carry it through.
Unfortunately for the merchant, he happened to catch his throat on the point of my dagger as I was leaving, and I heard he bled out into his empty safe, left there to rot in the heat of the city until three days later, when a neighbour noticed the stench. ”
Kyra’s breaths came a little shallower as I finished telling her my tale and I tilted my head at her, inviting her to share her truth with me in return if she so wished to.
Slowly, she shifted onto her hands and knees, crawling across the bed towards me and forcing my pulse to pick up as she drew closer, finally taking the position I’d indicated beside me and moving to sit there with her legs crossed as she turned to face me.
“Master Ramish was the nineteenth Fae to claim my coin,” she murmured, her gaze lowering to her hands as she spoke, her brow tightening as she worked to recall the memory and I waited for her to go on.
“He had heard of my gifts and what I was capable of but I... Well, I didn’t always fulfil his commands the way he intended.
If he asked me for a steak dinner, I would create a plate of grass because that is what a cow would eat for dinner.
Or if he requested a hand sewn tunic of the finest design, I would make it to fit a small child instead of his large frame,” she admitted, and I snorted a laugh.
“Why don’t you ever play those games with me?” I questioned and her gaze swept up to look at me from beneath her lashes, the gold in her eyes glimmering faintly in the moonlight which made it in from outside.
“Games?” she questioned.
“I think I would quite enjoy them,” I added, and surprise flickered across her face before she offered me a tentative smile.
“Even if I gave you a bed of straw instead of silk sheets?”
“There have been nights when I dreamed of the comfort of a straw bed, little goddess,” I replied.
“It would have been far preferable to cold stone and the stench of shit from the nearby streets. Every gift you offer me is far more than I could have ever dreamed of once. I may be enjoying the full benefits of your power, but I would be a fool to ever take it for granted.”
“I…” Kyra trailed off, her eyes filling with tears once more and I cleared my throat, waving my hand at her to dispel the show of emotion. I hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true, but the way she was looking at me made me feel uncomfortable about it.
“Tell me what he did then, if he failed to find humour in the work you did for him.”
“Ramish was not a tolerant man,” Kyra said softly.
“But he was clever. Cunning. He grew more careful with his commands, wording them in such a way that made it harder and harder for me to fulfil them in any way aside from how he desired. But I kept trying to sabotage him no matter what, feigning innocence whenever he lost his temper with me and shifting my body into smoke and magic if ever he raised his fist in anger at me. Until one day, I wasn’t paying attention and he simply reached out and grasped my arm.
I’ll never forget the look on his face when he confirmed his suspicions that it was possible for him to touch me.
And once he knew that was true, he started coming up with new commands.
Ones where he would force me to stay in solid form and allow him to punish me for all the ways in which I infuriated him. ”
A coldness came over me which washed away all sense of amusement over the games she had once played with her power, and nothing but hatred for the man who had taken so much from her and rewarded her with pain and degradation filled me in its place.
“If that man still draws breath, then point me in his direction,” I growled, seeing the scars of what he’d done to her plain enough on her face. “Call it payment for all you have offered me. I’ll make him scream for you if you want to hear it, little goddess. I’ll make him bleed so prettily.”
Kyra drew in a ragged breath, her eyes meeting mine and the realisation that I meant that passing between us thickly.
I didn’t offer it lightly. It wasn’t the kind of thing I did, solving other people’s problems for them or inserting myself into business which had no impact on me.
But Kyra’s magic was offering me a life which I never could have even thought to steal for myself, and she had only ever asked for freedom from her coin in payment for it.
I felt I owed her better than just the simple right to walk about beneath the sun and I would gladly offer her this if she wanted it from me.
“Ramish died many, many years ago,” she replied, her lips lifting as she thought on that fact.
“How?” I demanded, the heat in my blood insisting upon an answer to that question.
“He believed he had me broken,” she whispered. “After years of punishments and forcing my submission, he grew sloppy. He made a mistake. But that was all I had been waiting for. A single mistake which offered me an out.”
“What was it?” I asked, the dark of the night seeming to wrap around her and showing me the truth, which was so easy to miss when first looking at her; that she had scars inside of her deep and terrible, just waiting for an outlet which she was more than capable of channelling when the opportunity arose.
“He made a command and forgot to tie it up in enough knots to stop me from sabotaging it," she said, a rough lilt to her voice which had me hanging on her words.
“What did he ask for?” I asked eagerly, a sick kind of thrill rising within me as I waited for her answer.
The smile she gave me wasn’t a thing of innocence and wonder like those I’d seen on her before.
This smile was one of a malignant goddess.
One who had been scorned and abused and had finally reached her breaking point.
One who had gotten her revenge. And I had to admit, I liked the look it gave her and the way her expression brightened at the memory.
“Water,” she replied simply. “The fool asked me for water.”
I didn’t need to ask what she had done with that request. I could practically hear the rush of water crashing down upon the Fae who had thought to cage her and use her as if she were nothing but a possession.
I could feel the explosion of power that must have spilled from her as his voice was lost to the water, his screams alongside any other commands he might have wished to make turning into bubbles without meaning until she was free of him at last.
“You really are a magnificent creature,” I said to her, the awe in my tone clear enough that it brought a blush to her cheeks as we exchanged an intense look which acknowledged the similarities of our tainted souls.
The air between us seemed to grow thicker, harder to breathe and full of something I couldn’t put a name to. The dark crept closer, the light abandoning us in the company of one another and making the words we had exchanged feel like secrets which bound us more honestly than the power of the coin.
“Are you worried about the brawl tomorrow?” she asked me eventually, breaking the spell the silence held me in, and causing me to release a breath.
“Not even a little,” I replied. “No man can best me when I’m fighting for something I want. I didn’t earn my reputation for nothing.”
Kyra smiled at my accurate assessment of my skills, and she shifted to lay down beside me, just out of reach and still on top of the sheets, rolling onto her side as she looked at me.
“Can I stay here while you’re sleeping?” she asked quietly.
“You want to watch me sleep?” I teased.