Chapter 23 #3
The Dervish bumped his shoulder against Edmund’s, a gesture that might have only been friendly, if either one of them had been wearing clothes. “I’m sure you’ll be able to warm up again. Somehow.”
Edmund wiped the water out of his eyes. The Dervish strolled back to his fallen towel and began using it to dry his hair. That’s right. Look as much as you want … for now …
And then Edmund said exactly the wrong thing.
“You have such beautiful tattoos.”
Warmth drained out of the Dervish like blood pumping from a mortal wound. He dropped his hands. “Tattoos.”
Edmund came closer, reaching out to trail a fingertip across the Dervish’s shoulder. “Not tattoos. Scarification, right? The pattern is lovely…”
The Dervish knocked his hand away with enough force that the sword’s magic roused in complaint. Edmund took a step back, confusion written across his face, and the Dervish fought back a snarl.
The pattern is lovely.
He’d forgotten.
He’d actually forgotten.
He’d been preening under an attractive man’s appreciative gaze, and it had been like a breath of his old life back, but he didn’t look like he had back then.
A knife had left him scarred silver, body and soul, had carved rivers into his skin that would never fade, no matter how many deaths he endured.
He held out his arms, turned them, and stared at the thin metallic lines that ran their length, at the delicate silver arcs around his elbows, at the ragged slashes across the backs of his wrists where the manacles had cut into his skin when he fought against them.
Ancestors only knew what his back looked like.
“Of course you’d think it was lovely,” he said, his voice high and harsh as a jackal’s bark. “It was one of your order’s butchers who put them there.”
Edmund’s confusion had been shading into hurt, but that gave way to pure disbelief. “What?”
“You heard me.” The Dervish snatched up his clothes and began dressing hastily, hiding his disfigurement under the fabric.
“But how—why—”
“Because he was convinced he could learn something by slicing me open. Something about energy flows and correspondences.” He held up his left arm, staring at the point where silver lines crossed silver arcs.
Most of the lines there had been shallow …
marking his place, the bastard had said, but there was a silver dot at the elbow pit, laughably small for how much it had hurt.
“He drove a needle in right here, down until it hit bone.” The Dervish had screamed and screamed and screamed.
“Four times, once during each phase of the moon, to see what would be different.”
Edmund’s face was white and he had a hand over his mouth. “Many-Armed One have mercy.”
“Oh, he invoked your Many-Armed One plenty. He prayed for guidance and knowledge before every little session. That’s what he called them.
Our little sessions.” Another laugh that hurt his throat.
“Sometimes I didn’t even die. Then back into the sword to heal up, and out again in time for the next phase of the moon.
He was very fond of phases of the moon.”
“Lunarian theory,” Edmund said, closing his eyes. “Oh god. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
The name struck a chord of memory, called up charts that the Dervish had only seen in passing on the laboratory walls. “That sounds about right. He had all the phases of the moon engraved on the slab, too.”
“The slab…?”
The Dervish’s smile could have etched glass. “The one I was shackled to. Can’t have the subject wriggling around while you’re trying to cut, can you?”
It seemed that Edmund had been struck completely silent. The Dervish finished dressing and was shoving his feet back in his boots when Edmund burst out, “But it isn’t real!”
“What?”
The scholar grabbed handfuls of his wet hair. “Lunarian theory was disproved over a century ago—it doesn’t work—there isn’t any difference whether it’s full or dark or waning—he should never have done such a thing even if it was real but it wasn’t even—”
The Dervish started to laugh. It was an ugly, wracking sound and it tore his throat, just as he felt it tearing apart the last shreds of what he and Edmund might have shared.
“Are you telling me that I was mutilated for—I don’t know how long—for the equivalent of barnacle pigeons?
” Hell maybe I was the pigeon that got drowned. A century ago sounds just about right.
Edmund said nothing.
“Of course,” the Dervish said, with another laugh like broken glass in his throat. “Of course I’d get the sadistic bastard with a pet theory that wasn’t even right. But all knowledge is good knowledge, isn’t that what you said?”
There were tears in Edmund’s eyes. With his wet hair plastered down and stuck to his skin, he looked almost as miserable as the Dervish felt.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered.
He was, too. The Dervish didn’t doubt it for a moment. It just didn’t matter. Edmund could cry enough tears to fill an ocean, and it wouldn’t erase a single inch of silver from the Dervish’s skin.
And he knew it, and the Dervish knew it, and there was nothing left that words could change, so the Dervish turned on his heel and let the door slam shut behind him.