18. 17 #2
“He’ll think it’s for the last taking,” Petros replied.
I blinked, taking a second to recall the Wisdom practice of visiting those before they died, for their final reflections on their life.
They believed there was a moment of honesty and true wisdom that came when one wanted to die.
They maintained a collection of journals, The Takings, where they had written all of the last words they could reliably record.
Petros dangled the key. “Don’t be more than ten minutes. ”
Hook, baited, and strung. I nodded to him. “Thank you.”
He held out the key, and I reached for it. With a snap like a snake’s jaw, he pulled it back. I hesitated, my hand aloft, my eyes flashing with fear.
“You’ll come for a drink with me?” he asked.
Only, it was more of a statement, the question barely implied. This was payment.
I dampened my lip. “When?”
There was nothing in his gaze but the belief that I was the fish on his line, and not the other way around. His smugness could fill rooms. “The Bestiary. An hour after dark.”
I forced a smile. “I’ll be there.”
He watched me for only a second, and believing himself the victor, gave me the offering.
I snatched the key, and he grinned. We left the room together, and Petros mumbled something to Drach that had him scampering through the pocked glass door.
Then Petros swiftly opened the black door, and stood, holding it open for me.
“Come back up quickly,” he said. “Or Drach might bolt you in.”
I moved past him, and tasted the ugliness of his breath at the back of my throat. He chuckled as I stumbled down the stairs, and the light faded behind me. I found a torch hanging in a stand, and lifted it to better see the dimly-lit set of stairs. The smell down here had only got worse.
At the bottom, I was relieved to discover that Petros had told me the truth.
There was a locked door, also painted black, and the key slipped easily into the lock.
I turned it with a thunk, and pushed through.
There was a small room beyond it, with a cot bed, a chair, and some crumbs of a lunch now long gone.
I leaned against the door, and gave myself ten seconds to think about what I had just done.
Davian was in here, somewhere. Under Oath, in this same building. And here I was, flirting with an apathetic creep in order to talk to a madman about my dead friend. I settled my hand on the cold wall, for the second time that day thinking I would throw up.
The blood rushed to my head and I spat out the saliva pooling in my mouth.
Everything about today had been a sickening nightmare.
I was crumbling, and I knew I could spiral if I gave myself the leash to do it.
But I only had ten minutes. And if I was right, the true key, the one to finding Jusia’s killer, could be down these stairs.
So when I opened the next door and reached the guard, I was the portrait of studious and reserved.
The man eyed me, standing from his stool behind a locked metal gate. He was in his middle years, and he groaned as he stood and peered at my face. “Who are you?”
It was not unusual that I served without a mark, it would be probably assumed that I was some kind of academic, hoping to be chosen.
I had spent no time with any devotees of Wisdom, the Goddess Knessus, but they were famed for being a civilised order. Those who became pledged and accepted devotees, marked by her, were often lifelong students, chosen at an older time of their life.
“Melissa,” I replied, offering yet another lie. “I assist with the taking for the Wise. Petros let me down. I’m here to see Juven.”
“Really?” he said, but it was more of an exclamation than a true question.
He reached his other hand up to scratch at his pock-marked bald head.
His eyes were sunken and, if the torch light was true, his skin colour looked off, too unnaturally pale.
He shrugged. “He must be scheduled for hanging after all. Thank Akaur. He’s driven me full mad. ”
I did not reply, only nodding. This was not a teaching I knew of Knessus, but one of Talia and Ekris. Often, the best way to deal with a man was to let him fill the silence and to let him make the move.
He cleared his throat and unlocked the iron gate. “Come through, he’s this way.”
I held tight onto my own torch as he led us into the darkness, our two amber circles overlapping and casting limited light into what appeared to be mostly empty cells.
The darkness was a punishment. A removal from Akaur’s light, a way to dwell in the darkness of the deeds the accused had committed.
Then, when it was time, they would be delivered their true justice against the columns on the prison roofs.
Strung up or hanged in the midday sun, the light of Akaur their final reckoning, and unwelcome after their time in the pits of this place.
In my town, we had The Pit, covered by wooden planks that the kids would jump over and poke sticks down into. Ten feet down, the criminal could avoid the worst of it by lying on the floor. Then the hangings would be at midday in the central square. My parents had taken me to several.
“Juven. You’ve got a visitor.”
The guard’s voice made me jump, as after passing dark empty cells, I had almost convinced myself we were the only living souls down here.
But he stopped at the next cage. At first, I thought this one was empty, too. But then the firelight flickered past the shadows of the bars and fell on a crouched form.
My heart juddered, as I realised the light had not caught on his cloak, but his exposed back, thick bear-like back hair facing us as he turned away, his hands coming up to cover his eyes.
The guard repeated himself. “Visitor for you.”
The man shook his head. “Not allowed.” His voice was as husky as those who spent all day on the pipe.
The guard beside me rolled his eyes and gave me a shrug, like this type of behaviour—this type of broken man—was entirely commonplace. His voice was full of condescension. “Today is different.”
The man shook his head. “Never different.”
The guard sighed and tapped his torch on the bars, and the prisoner jumped, turning to the noise.
His beard was down to his chest and filthy, and it was impossible to find the line where his hair met with the straggly mass, because it was all in the same oily and dirty state.
His skin was loose around his belly where his dark trousers sat.
Dirt covered his features, but from the half moons of skin beneath his brown eyes, I could see he was still just a man.
It was one of the saddest things I had ever seen.
The prisoner, Juven, looked at the guard first, the source of the noise. I saw the hatred in his dilating eyes. Quickly, though, his eyes turned to me. He appraised me, and I struggled not to cower. Then he shook his head, and turned back to the wall. “Young,” he muttered. “Too young.”
I swallowed, simultaneously glad he had stopped looking at me, but also growing with awareness that this was likely a lost battle. If the man had lost his mind down in the darkness, he could hardly shine a light on Jusia.
The guard tapped the bars again, but this time Juven didn’t turn. “Sorry, miss. He’s as backwards as a stone stew.”
I stared at Juven’s back, and then at the wavering light of the guard’s torch. He had started muttering to himself about fire, light, and darkness. I barely made out the words.
There might be a fraction of him left. And I had come all this way. I had to try, for Jusia.
“Would you leave us?” I asked, trying to bend the question into more of a statement. “The rites are supposed to be private, after all.”
“Ah,” the guard said, scratching his bald head again. There was no ounce of guile or suspicion in him towards me. It was the great leveller of being young and pretty, the ability to be perceived so innocently. He nodded. “Alright, then. I’ll be down the end.”
I nodded my head in an intimation of a bow, giving him my first smile. “You are most kind.”
His eyes widened and his chest puffed. “Right.”
The guard left, offering me a nod over his shoulder which I returned encouragingly. When I had determined he was far enough not to overhear, I stepped once towards the bars.
Juven quietened, and my heart thudded.
“Juven,” I started, uncertain if I should address him by his name. He did not move. “There’s something I want you to look at.”
A rumble came from him so suddenly I took half a step back. It was a hacking, unpleasant noise that took me several seconds to realise was laughter. “Look at,” he murmured. Then louder. “Look at! Dark all the time. No look.”
I cringed. “There’s light here now.”
He shook his head, his back rising and falling with heavy breaths. “Their light. It’s all wrong.”
“Juven,” I tried again, a touch louder. I pulled the piece of paper from my cloak pocket. “Have you seen this mark before?”