Chapter Seven
A Life Restrained
“Isaac!”
He sprinted down the stairs, feeling like he wasn’t touching
them at all. He dodged through a gauntlet of crumbled stone, dusty cobwebs, and
scattered human skulls. Above, the ceiling of the stairwell was the segmented
vertebrae of the giant, unknown creature, each arc of bone like a moon crashing
from the sky.
“Isaac!”
Soon, he couldn’t see the stairs. The darkness had grown
thick with frightening speed. He could only feel his gasps for air, his
pounding footsteps, his body’s instinctive sense of where the next perch would
lie. Each step into the black was a leap and a prayer.
He should’ve untied himself.
He should’ve immediately fled for the tomb.
He should’ve never cast a fireball at a fucking pirate ship.
The stairs ended without warning, startling him, the
transition to flat ground sending him sprawling across a floor of smooth tiles.
Isaac barely felt the impact. He scrambled, running again, having no idea where
he was going. Down below the earth, in the heavy silence brought by rock and
sand, every sound echoed like a clarion.
The loudest sound was footsteps. They were coming from
behind. They were moving at a very fast pace.
Louder, faster, closer.
With a deep animal panic, Isaac noticed he was in a
corridor, and there was some kind of green light ahead, flickering like fire.
Suddenly, he spotted the outlines of pews and carpets, each of them assembled
in rows. When he dashed into the room, the ceiling widened up into a cavernous
vault, with a segment of the titan’s vertebrae acting as the apex. Below,
surrounding him, there were pillars of stone connected by curving arches.
Arcaded piers, Isaac thought.
Lessons of architecture wormed through his mind. He noticed
the reliefs carved across the trestles, the subtle corrugation of the piers. A
nave was the center aisle of a church. The wings were called transepts. The
space behind the altar was the apse.
This was a chapel for the dead.
Footsteps behind him.
Louder.
Faster.
Closer.
The light he had seen was a ring of green fire surrounding
the piers, each of them torches burning inside a wall-mounted sconce. Ahead, at
the foot of the altar, an onyx statue stood beneath the vaulted ceiling,
depicting two figures together. One was human, kneeling with clasped hands, and
the other was a zoanthrope whose species he had never seen before. The standing
beast held a clenched fist to the air. At its feet, the human was withering
into bone.
Isaac felt a snarl behind his back.
Rotted carpet bunched at his feet. He reached the stairs
before the altar. He felt the rushing wind behind him. In a single moment of
clarity, he saw the stripes and stars symbol patched on the human figure of the
statue.
Zaria tackled him with the gracefulness of a carriage,
sending both of them sprawling across the floor in a vicious tangle of limbs.
Isaac cracked his head against the carved reliefs of the altar. Dazed,
breathless, he felt a clawed hand gripping his shoulder. He struggled,
flinched, gasped.
A dagger pressed into his throat.
“You furless weasel!” Zaria snarled in his face, her teeth
yellow, her wild eyes reflecting fire. “You sodding ape!”
Isaac squirmed beneath her, pushing and kicking. The blade
of the dagger wedged deeper into his neck.
“Give me a reason!” she yelled.
His neck bulged against the blade with every panicked
breath. “I—you—”
“I’ll fuckin’ do it! You think I haven’t? You think you’ll
be special?” Her hand squeezed his shoulder. “We all bleed the same, young
lord! I promise you!”
“I tried to save you!” Isaac barked.
“You buried me! Tried to leave me for dead!”
The edge went deeper. His hands sank into the fur of her
chest, unable to push. All he could do was twist and gasp.
“Beg!” she yelled. “Beg for mercy!”
Blood trickled down his neck.
“I swear,” Zaria growled, “if I don’t hear some real, honest
pleas.”
“Fuck you,” Isaac hissed.
“Isaac—”
“No! Fuck you! I’m sick of your threats! I’m sick of
enduring your chatter! Most of all, I’m sick of you getting in my way!”
The blade trembled at his throat. Her mohawk spilled across
her face, glowing green with fire.
“Do it,” he said.
“Don’t test me, squire.”
“I’m not,” Isaac said, “your fucking squire.”
He looked her right in the eye.
Neither of them blinked. Dust spilled from the spine of a titan, sprinkling
across the tiles.
“I’m calling your bluff,” he said. “You need me. You’re
scared.”
She huffed in his face.
“You won’t kill me.”
Her black snout curled. The blade twitched, and her grip on
his shoulder tightened. Their eyes never left each other. He didn’t think about
the history of this chapel—its purpose and architecture and all the exalted
corpses which might have passed through its halls. For once, his life of study
and research faded from his mind.
There was only him and her and a dagger at his throat.
A long moment passed.
She yanked the dagger away. Isaac tried not to gasp in
relief. After stabbing her weapon back into its sheath, she gripped his
shoulder with her other hand, leaving him completely pinned to the floor. Her
hands were so big they could meet at his spine. He knew, very consciously, that
she could pull him apart, like the leg of a cooked chicken.
Isaac swallowed.
“Just seemed like the right thing to do,” she hissed, mimicking
his voice. “Where’d you get that idea, Isaac? Huh? You read that in a book
somewhere, sippin’ on your wine?”
He took a few ragged breaths, wincing at every stretch of
his throat.
“What was I to do,” Zaria asked, “if I couldn’t dig my way
out, huh? Was I supposed to starve in that hole while you traipsed off to
glory?”
“I gave you—”
“You gave me nothing!” she yelled, in his face. “No rope, no
prybar, nothing! I would’ve died down there if rust and rock hadn’t worked in
my favor!” She clamped down on a snarl. “Thought you were being heroic, did
you? Thought giving me the choice of starvation or capture was some noble
fuckin’ mercy?”
“I did my best!” he yelled back. “I could’ve just let the
shibboleth kill you! I could’ve said nothing while you blundered into a hex!
Maybe that would’ve been smart!”
Her snout curled. The scar on her nose looked jagged and
cruel.
“Listen,” he said, trying to collect himself. “I gave you
privileged information. Sensitive Diet contacts. Do you understand, in the
slightest, how dangerous it was to share that information?”
“Aye, I do. And I don’t give a rat-tailed fuck, ‘cause it
wouldn’t a done me no good at all.” She pointed to the dark corridor at the end
of the chapel. “You saw my ship skulking nearby. If I leave this giant corpse,
it’ll be as a lamb to slaughter. I’d never make the trip outta this scorch. The
second I step away, I’ll be dead by dusk, if I’m lucky.”
“If you don’t leave this skeleton,” Isaac said, “it’ll be
worse, I promise you. Do you know what necrotic magic does to skin and bone? Do
you know how easily a sorcerer could wrench your soul from its tether?”
She took a breath, looked at him a moment longer, and pushed
herself up to a full sitting position, trailing a hand over the leather
plackart circling her belly. “Take another gander at these scars, Isaac. I know
you like to look.”
He glanced away, trying to spy the
onyx statue on the altar. Green firelight danced across the pews and piers.
“Look at me, you little shit.”
He looked at her, grimacing with discomfort.
She guided his gaze across her torso, pointing out the blood
stains on her vest, a welt on her shoulder, the scabbed-over cuts on her arms,
even a purple bruise on the thin region of fur beside her breast. When she was
sure she had his attention, she undid one of the straps tying her leather
plackart together, peeling the stiff material from her waist.
He saw, quite plainly, that her entire left side was coated
in blood, from the bottom of her ribs to the top of her pelvis. The scarlet was
fresh. It matted to her fur like porridge on a carpet, drowning the brown spots
and hints of abdominal muscle. He could not see exactly what the injury was,
but the amount of blood left no question as to its severity.
“Gods,” Isaac said, startled.
“Yeah,” Zaria replied. “Thought so.”
“Have you just been . . . walking around like this? The
whole time?”
“Ain’t had a choice, squire.” She looked down, prodding a
finger at the worst of the blood. Her snout curled with a hiss. “It needs stitchin’, and I ain’t got the tools.”
Isaac watched her retie the strap of her armor. He gave a
small tug against the rope on his wrists. He had managed to cut through some of
the hemp, but not enough to pull it apart on his own.
“You gonna listen now?” Zaria asked.
Isaac let his hands fall, watching her.
“For my one good deed,” Zaria continued, “I got the pleasure
of being whipping post for a ship of angry pirates. I got tied to a mast,
denied food and drink, and I got cut by every sharp object the imagination
allowed. Only reason I’m still drawing breath is ‘cause the captain of the Saber
wanted me subject to treason.”
She leaned in, and the smell of her unwashed animal musk
fell over him like a blanket. He wanted to cringe away, but there was nowhere
to go.
“You ever had someone explain how they’re going to torture
you to death?” She traced a claw around the edge of his ear. “They say it real
slow like, relishin’ every word. Knowin’ you can’t do
nothin’ to help yourself.”
Isaac remembered the lashing of the cane.
He did not answer.
“My captain,” Zaria said, “was soaking her britches, just
from the thought of pulling my entrails out with hot pincers, smashing bone,
ripping flesh, wringing every ounce of pain to the drop. Now, after that, you
think I’m eager to see her face chasing me down a dune?”
Isaac gave a noncommittal response.
“I’ll assume,” the hyena said, “you don’t know who she is.
Black Eye Soren, captain of the Silent Saber. One of the few pirates