Chapter 12 #2
“Sure,” said the Dervish, rolling his eyes. “I’ll put ‘plague nurse’ on my list of things to do before I die. Again. Are you done?”
Edmund flushed and began hastily wrapping a length of cloth around the Dervish’s torso.
The Dervish felt a little bad about crushing his idea like that.
It was the sort of thing that a good person would do if they were unwillingly immortal.
Angharad’s probably somewhere ferrying supplies to the sick as we speak.
“I’m sorry I hurt you for no reason,” Edmund said. “I should have asked.”
“S’fine.” The Dervish’s skin prickled, pleasantly this time. Edmund really did have very good hands, warm and moving gently across his chest. He could get used to this.
One of those deft fingers slid down from the Dervish’s shoulder blade, across his flank. The Dervish shivered in response. “I’m sorry,” Edmund said.
“Mmm, don’t be.”
“No, I—err—your tattoo here—the line got scuffed?”
“Oh.” That killed his growing arousal as quickly as snow down the back of his neck. “They aren’t tattoos. They’re scars.”
“Scars?” Edmund stared at him, then at his back.
The Dervish could suspect what he was seeing, a whole monstrous constellation of silver marks.
He reached for his shirt and pulled it hastily on.
Someday he was going to have to get two mirrors and see how horrific his back looked.
And my face. Can’t forget the face. He was dreading that.
Angharad had teased him about being vain, but the truth was that the Dervish’s good looks were as important to him as his daggers in making his mark on the world.
Though if I’m being mistaken for an angel, hopefully it’s not that bad.
He looked down at his hands, marred with dozens of small silver cuts, and then at the thick metallic river that ran up both arms. He pulled his cuffs down firmly and looked up to see Edmund staring at him.
“Soup smells ready,” he said, to forestall any questions.
“Oh? Oh! Yes, of course.” Edmund only had one bowl, but pulled the cups out of the saddlebags and scooped up soup in them.
“Ah … Large Francis, can you eat this? There’s no meat in it, it’s made with dried potato, which is a tuber in the nightshade family.
The leaves are poisonous to humans, but the tuber is not. ”
“I-will-sample, if-I-may?”
The Dervish sipped soup from his cup. It was actually very good, or at least he was hungry and it was hot, which was probably the same thing. The mushroom bits were only a little chewy.
They ate in relative silence, listening to the crackle of the fire. The Dervish found it companionable, although it was probably just that everyone was ravenous. They demolished the soup, which he suspected would have lasted Edmund a week if he was traveling alone.
“We’ll need to pick up supplies soon,” he said. “Or else take time to hunt something.”
“Not a hunt-gnole. A gnole can catch mice, but takes a lot of mice for a meal.” Dog Violet showed her fangs in a sneaking smile. “A gnole has found most humans don’t like mice anyway.”
“I-fear-my-people-are-exclusively-herbivores.”
“I am not a good hunter,” said Edmund. “By which I mean I don’t know how to do it.”
“What, you mean you’ve never read a book about it?”
“Oh no, I’ve read several, including a fascinating treatise on sturgeon hunting in the north, which was considered distinct from fishing according to the practitioners.
Did you know they have bones in their ears that show growth rings, like a tree?
You can determine their age by examining the bones. ”
“I asked,” said the Dervish to no one in particular. “I knew what would happen and I asked anyway.”
“At any rate,” said Edmund, giving him a wry look, “hunting is not a thing that can be learned from a book. At least, not successful hunting. I might be able to set a snare, but then we’d have to stay here until it caught something, and none of us want to do that. What about you?”
“Sure,” said the Dervish. “If a deer comes at you with murder in its heart, I will hunt the hell out of it.”
“Barring any incidents with murderous deer, I suspect we should just keep moving.” Edmund picked up a stick and began scratching marks in the dirt.
“If we stay on this road another day, we should come to a branch leading southeast. That leads toward the river, and we’ll get into farm country.
There won’t be any inns for a while, but we can probably buy some food at a farmhouse.
” He paused, looking around the campfire.
“Err … sorry, I’m making assumptions here.
Obviously you two have your own places to be. ”
“A gnole doesn’t really.” Dog Violet shrugged. “A gnole would prefer to stay with book-man and knife-man for a bit. Last time a gnole met with strange humans, didn’t go so well.”
“Yes, of course,” said Edmund. “You’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like. We’re going to Archon’s Glory, which is the capital of Archenhold.”
The Dervish stifled a sigh. Somehow he’d known that Edmund was the type to adopt strays. Still, the gnole seemed perfectly competent and unlikely to slow them down. He looked over at Large Francis. “And where were you headed?”
“We-were-going-to-the-Temple-of-the-Lord-of-the-Book. It-seemed-most-likely-to-have-a-library.”
Ice water sank into the Dervish’s bones.
“The Lord of the Book—oh! Yes,” said Edmund. “He’s called the Many-Armed God here. I’m certain the temple would be ecstatic to learn of your existence. In fact—”
“No!” The word erupted from the Dervish’s mouth with the force of vomit. “You can’t go there.”
The other three turned to stare at him. Sweetness snorted. A voice in his head, hateful and so well-remembered, whispered, The Lord of the Book be praised, we’re learning so much …
“Dervish?” Edmund asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes.” The Dervish shuddered, adrenaline flooding his body until his muscles shook. He felt cold and hot and the silver scars that traced his body burned as if they were freshly cut. “Fuck. They still exist?”
“Y-yes?” Edmund faltered as the Dervish’s gaze swept over him.
the net falls and tangles his limbs and the slab is cold and the manacles are colder and he begs but it is not enough it is never enough
“They’re butchers,” he said, the words coming out clipped and cold. “They’ll take you apart in the name of science, and they won’t stop no matter how you beg. Go anywhere in the world, Francis, but not to them.”
“This-is-most-distressing.” Large Francis’s feelers moved back and forth like a cat’s lashing tail.
“But they don’t—” Edmund began, and now it was his remembered voice that the Dervish heard. I am … I was … a dedicate. At the Temple of the Many-Armed God.
He was on his feet. He did not remember how. “You’re one of them,” someone said, in a guttural voice that did not sound at all like his own.
“Easy, knife-man…”
I never got away after all. I’m just on a longer chain.
He was standing over Edmund and the weight of the dagger hilts lay against his palms. He had to get between the blade and the wielder, but he knew the secret now, the loophole the Smith had never thought of.
He could end this. There were only so many good deeds that a man like the Dervish could commit, but he could remove another of these bastards from the world, and surely the world would be better for it.
“Dervish,” said Edmund, “if you tell me what’s wrong, I’ll try to help.”
Silver eyes met brown and locked together like sword hilts.
If there had been any guilt in the other man’s eyes, even any fear, the Dervish would have struck. But all Edmund’s gaze held was worry, all of it for him. Does he not know that he’s in danger? Does he not care?
With Edmund, it could go either way. The Dervish’s knuckles were white on the dagger hilts, but he had not yet drawn. “You’re one of them,” he said again.
The scholar’s face was still bruised and swollen, but his expression was absolutely clear. “I left.”
Two words only, but they rang like a bell in the empty hollows of the Dervish’s soul.
He left.
He left.
And then, as the rage and the horror began to recede, a voice that sounded like Angharad’s said, Oh for pity’s sake, it’s Edmund, bandaging you up probably hurt him worse than it hurt you, he makes friends with bugs over math, do you really think he’s been carving up victims in the basement of some temple?
The Dervish had misjudged people’s character before, but surely no one could be that wrong.
We’re learning so much … whispered the memory of his tormentor.
Easy. It’s not happening now. It’s not here.
Angharad’s voice again. Oh my sister, if you were here, you’d have handled this all so much better.
He took a deep breath through his nose, exhaled, did it again.
Then again and again, counting. From a distance, he heard Edmund say his name, and Dog Violet say, “Don’t. Knife-man needs time.”
Time. Yes. He’d had time, hadn’t he? So many years sleeping inside the sword. That was enough time, it seemed, to blunt the horrors so that he was standing here, counting breaths, not screaming and writhing like a mad thing on a slab.
He turned to walk away, and Dog Violet, looking just slightly sheepish, lowered the piece of firewood that she’d been holding at the level of his knees. The gnole was clearly the only person with any sense in a five-mile radius.
“Only if you did something bad, knife-man,” she said.
“Oh, you have no idea,” said the Dervish, and stalked away.