Chapter 3
Torver rises easily the next morning, keen to begin work, to restart the mammoth task of saving a thousand yan. He clomps into Bassen’s room and practically pulls her from her bed.
Soon, they’re out on the winding streets: assortments of wide and narrow, cobbled and paved. Were he alone, passersby might smile at Torver.
But they do no such thing when the breeze blows Bassen’s hood down, revealing her white hair parted in two thin braids.
The crowds part for them, opposing freaks of nature as they are.
She is death itself, famed and feared. And he is an aching abyss, one that sucks in worth and spits out deficiency.
But at least no one knows who he is.
Trying to remain unseen as best they can, Bassen leads him around—her sense of direction is formidable, even when she’s feeling unwell. At his side, her walk is an almost limping gait and he winces when he sees how the whites of her eyes are blotched with blood.
They enter the cider slums and the streets look familiar. The ground is dusty, the ferns left to grow tall, shaded by ramshackle buildings. But despite the squalor, a sweetness lingers in the air, courtesy of the breweries that give the area its name.
But the peace evaporates like mist when thunderous hooves split the air.
Torver runs into a ginnel, pulling Bassen after him, just in time to avoid an Enforcer cantering past, his roan shire’s hooves punching grooves in the dirt. The noise is a wall, like the one they’re pressed against.
“Obedience!” the Enforcer’s voice booms. Torver sneaks a look around the corner, the man’s bronze armour glinting back. “Obedience keeps the Beast asleep!”
Torver’s breakfast threatens to return to his mouth when he sees what the Enforcer is dragging.
A dead man, pulled by the neck on a thick rope, cut down from the gallows. Lest anyone forget.
The dust settles, the Enforcer and the noise fading towards the main street of the Wen, the mighty Rhodfa.
It takes a long time for Torver’s heart to slow, even longer for him to push the dragged corpse from his mind, helped by the appearance of the gate to the Official’s manor.
Amble lives in splendour, separated from the poverty around him by a tall fence of shimmering stone. A guard with a shaved head stands at the front gate and swallows hard when they approach.
“Good morning,” Bassen says, voice thin with fatigue. “I”m here to take care of the mint? I was sent a job scroll.”
The guard nods nervously, looking away. Her eyes flick over Torver, as if wondering why he’s at the deathmancer’s side—but she doesn’t question, only pulls the levers to open the large portcullis. Torver wonders if he should have avoided the front entrance and snuck in through the back instead.
Either way, it’s too late, and as they pass through the threshold, Torver can’t help but crane his head upwards, taking in the red-brick manor.
The silence is heavy as the guard leads them through intricately carved oak doors, and he has to remind himself that Officials don’t spot-check papers, like Enforcers.
Officials are far too important for that.
Lowborn brutes become Enforcers and check papers.
The rich, the powerful—they become important Officials, eligible to be elected into the Meddera.
And Amble must be a very important Official. Torver’s eyes drink in the luscious interior of the entrance hall. Wast’s ill-gotten opulence is a cheap imitation.
The marble floors shine like a still ocean.
Statues, paintings, and framed scrolls hang from the walls.
The windows are tall and numerous, flooding the manor with light.
The guard takes them swiftly through the place, ignoring the many doors and corridors leading to exotic rooms unknown.
Instead, she leads them straight out to the gardens.
“Woah.” Torver doesn’t know how the slums, the dust, the hunger—how can they exist so close to this luxury?
The gardens extend backwards, away from the manor into a row of trees that hide the city behind.
The west side hosts hedges trimmed into the patriotic shape of a sleeping dragon.
The central area is a lush lawn, no doubt kept green under the beating sun by watermancing gardeners.
The east side of the garden is filled with rows of flowering lavender bushes adorned with bees.
Serrated green leaves crowd the purple flowers and Torver’s nose wrinkles with the scent.
“When you’re done, you’ve no need to collect payment at the Court of Works,” the guard says, standing tall with her hands behind her back, her face blanched. “The master will return from Court in two hours to pay you himself. I’ll inform the other staff of your arrival so you’re not disturbed.”
Bassen nods politely while Torver inwardly snickers at Amble, making his staff call him master.
“Where shall I put the mint when I’ve…finished with it?” Bassen asks.
The guard doesn’t look at her, finds a point of interest by her feet instead.
“There, Miss Bassen,” she says, pointing to a small wooden cart on the stone patio by the door. “If you don’t m-mind,” she adds, her carefully concealed fear betrayed by her last syllable.
Before either of them can thank her, the guard nods curtly and scurries back into the house. A small sigh comes from Bassen.
She turns to him. “Two hours then, hm?”
“Two hours,” Torver agrees. “Let’s get paid!”
Bassen is nearly as eager as him to begin. Her shaking fingers flex, a sallow darkness beneath her eyes as she walks a lap of the lavenders, strangled in a sea of fragrant mint. She stumbles jerkily over a flat patch of lawn.
“Are you okay?” Torver asks her. Her lips press into a line in response.
“Small and precise…” She doesn’t answer his question and describes the job to herself instead. “I hope it’s enough,” she adds quietly.
She finishes her lap of the plants and settles beside him. And then he feels the air temperature around them drop.
One by the one, the mint plants flail delicately in the dirt. The air is sharp and sweet in Torver’s nose, the plants releasing their scent like it’s a scream.
When she does this, Torver hates himself, but he’s jealous of her.
Only for a moment. But for that moment, he would give anything for the burning hollow of his chest to be filled with her power. To do what she does. To be who she is. Who he isn’t.
He stands uselessly and watches in the cooled air as the leaves turn from green to brown. Torver is impressed with her precision, leaving the lavenders untouched while the mint receives a quiet massacre.
When it’s done, Bassen sighs in relief. The colour has returned to her cheeks.
“Better?” Torver asks, patting her shoulder.
Bassen moves her arms beside her like they’re wings. They stretch above her head and she grumbles low notes of pleasure at the release.
“The best,” she sighs, sitting down on the stone patio with one hand stretched behind her. The other hand lifts the hem of her dress, so that the sunlight can touch her pale shins.
Torver rolls up his sleeves. It’s his time to shine.
“Allow me, master.” He performs a magnificent bow before getting to work ripping up the dead plants.
This part makes him feel useful, makes him feel good, and it seems like a fair way to earn the money that she sneaks into his hands at the end of every job.
He knows this part would be difficult for her to do without him.
Even his muscles ache, his body coated with sweat after a few minutes of work.
Bassen is better off saving what little energy she has.
Because even though Torver has no magic of his own, he knows about its consequences.
He’s seen with his own eyes how unused magic insists on itself, overheard endless complaints, seen countless mishaps.
Magic throws tantrums like a petulant child; it makes its own fun if it isn’t played with.
Bad enough for watermancers who wake to flooded rooms. Devastating for those who are magically strong, whose muscles will clench until their bones snap.
Bassen’s consequence is possibly the worst of all. Particularly because she uses her magic the least she can.
When her magic demands to feed on life and she doesn’t comply—hers is the life it begins to take, an unending betrayal that she struggles to control. It’s her magic that turned her hair white, her perpetual state of gently dying taking its toll.
She could avoid it by killing more. But she doesn’t like to and he knows that she resents not having the choice. No matter how she tries, her eyes have a sadness. The constant fatigue, the haze of a permanent pain.
He finishes tugging the mint from the earth, while Bassen soaks up the sunshine.
But when Amble, a large man with a complexion not dissimilar to a joint of gammon, returns to his manor to haughtily pay her, Bassen slips Torver one of her tethera and instructs him to go and have fun.
After the past few days he’s had, she doesn’t need to tell him twice.
After waving Bassen goodbye and walking deeper into the Wen, Torver wonders if it’s too early in the day to get drunk. He’d wager that it is. But he’s being very brave and he doesn’t let this stop him.
He darts down side streets, avoiding the busier routes more likely to have checkpoints, or Enforcer patrols. Instead, he passes watermancing washerwomen, old men whittling while perched on empty cider barrels.
The tavern he arrives at is the Sprinkling Tarn and it sits on the edge of the river, jutting over the swirling blue water on great wooden legs. He’s been meaning to try this one for ages.
When he goes inside, he’s greeted by a large barwoman and a beer-scented fog rising from the carpet that squelches underfoot. The place is littered with darkwood tables and chairs, lit by the daylight through the windows, cooled by the river air where those windows hang open. And it’s busy.
Middle-aged men playing cards, people eating hearty meals and laughing over beers, young women laughing with glasses of drink in their slim hands.
Shaggy dogs lie patiently under tables, eyes alert for dropped scraps of food.
Without Bassen at his side, no one looks scared, no one runs away.
They don’t know him at all, and he likes that.
None of these people could ever guess that he’s a freak.
He goes to a new tavern each time, for that very reason.
Torver is generally a frugal man—he has to be with his lofty financial plans. But alcohol is always his exception when the situation calls for it. He pulls a silver tan from his pocket and buys a large jug of strong beer, cooled by the sullen icemancing of the barwoman’s teenage son.
Torver takes his cargo to a free spot by the window, a small brown table with two hard chairs, and holds court with the breeze blowing in.
He stretches his legs out, pouring beer from the jug into the metal cup the barwoman gave him.
The first sip hits his parched throat like a kiss, refreshing so that he feels new.
After that, he doesn’t drink slow and he doesn’t savour the taste.
Torver drinks to get drunk. Soon, the jug is half gone and he’s leaning back in his chair, the sun on his face, eyes closed.
A bard in the corner strums on an instrument and sings a sanctioned legend.
How Dunmail, the last king, gave his life to ensnare the Beast in eternal sleep, his cairn resting atop them both, the founding of the People’s Kingdom his last wish.
Torver never liked the sanctioned songs.
Hearing about the Beast makes something in the pit of his stomach clench, and he inwardly wishes the bard would sing something sexier.
Or at least more modern—he heard a fabulous lament on his last tavern outing; some minor-keyed warble about a mother whose lost child had been returned a changeling.
There’s a small chance it was the beer, but he’d gotten rather emotional.
Two more cups and he’s chatting over the songs to the older men playing cards at the table behind him.
Torver belly laughs along with them, spilling beer on his knees, his cup topped up by their generous offerings.
They chat for what feels like hours, until the men ask what his magic is.
After a wide-eyed second, he tells them he’s a dreamwalker.
He goes to sleep and walks through other people’s dreams to see what they know, what they feel.
The penultimate cup of his jug sees him approached by a woman from the other end of the tavern. She had overheard him talking to the bawdy men, and introduces herself, saying that he sounds like a fun guy. He assures her that he is a very fun guy.
Soon, breath sweet with beer, he’s leaning over the table and she’s leaning forward on the other side of it, and she’s looking right into his eyes.
She’s beautiful and freckled. He can’t decide if her hair is a light brown or a dark blonde, but it hangs from her head in loose waves, their ends dancing around her chest, and his eyes keep darting there.
Her fingers are trailing lazily up and down his wrist, and his insides feel jittery like he’s full of spiders.
She compliments his earring and looks at his lips. The open want of it all.
But the him that she wants is the charming dreamwalker, not the stupid, magicless freak who can only get this sociable by drinking a whole jug of beer. He no longer wants to touch her, doesn’t want to sully her with the gaping chasm of his lack.
But when she asks him if he wants to come back to her house, if he wants to walk through her dreams and tell her how she feels, he lets himself imagine it for a stolen second.
Her hands on his body, his mouth on her neck, her pulse under his wet, pink tongue.
He can feel his face go slack and, Beast below, he wants so desperately for his lies to be true.
He downs his final cup of beer and the drink is suddenly bitter in his mouth. He’s almost glad when the gang of bronze Enforcers burst in, demanding to spot-check the papers of the tavern’s patrons.
In the uproar, Torver slips out of the open window, landing with a heavy slap in the river below.
He swims to shore and hauls himself across the cobbles, exuding river water as he goes. He rises to his sopping feet and begins the long shuffle home to Bassen, alone, leaving a trail of water behind him.
The most harried slug in all the Wen.