Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Demetri
The Laurels
For the second time in the last twenty-four turns, I was locked in a room that stunk of sweat, piss, and shit.
“Get ye defiled flesh away from me,” Iagor grunted, knocking my knee with his.
“To where, you dolt?”
Said room—or cupboard, really—was barely ten paces wide, and between the five of us, plus a bucket of waste in the corner, a chappellum cell would’ve been more comfortable.
At least there I could have lain down and nursed my wounds without another filth-caked body rubbing against mine.
I swallowed a breath, careful to gulp it down rather than sniff.
Windowless, thick tallow candles burned from a metal bowl swinging from a beam above, the sour reek of rendered fat not quite enough to mask Iagor’s essence.
“Further over, ye cur.”
I fisted the stone beside my head, one shoulder crushed against it. “Granted it’s dark, Iagor, but even your watery little eyes must see that this is a fucking wall.”
“Well, press thee against it!” A few speckles of spit landed on my arm, his gummy mouth dribbling. “I will not suffer thy skin upon mine. Ye have done enough.” Pressing a tentative finger to the bridge of his nose, he winced, the line of it crooked and bent.
“Had he not improved your nose, ’tis you who’d be fit for a wall.
” My eyes snapped to the laurel opposite, his fair hair dusted with ash.
“Instead of being set apart for brawling, you’d have long since suffered a plague and an acolyte’s hammer.
” He cupped his hands, gaze fixed on the candles.
“Thank the First you were last in line. Thank the First blood runs in your veins and not mortar, fellow laurel. Endure his knee and cease your needless prattling.”
I nudged it further into him.
“’Twas the Blood God who spared me,” Iagor protested, jerking away with a snarl. “Not this fair-faced pup.”
Dragging a lazy finger around the ball of his kneecap, I leaned closer, gagging on a fresh wave of boiled onions. “Iagor, darling…you think I’m pretty?”
“Ye scoundrel!” He slapped at my hand, already retracted, striking his bone instead. “Ye sinners, looking at me arse like a slice of bread to be buttered!”
I tempered a smile, eyes clashing with Maxius’ over Iagor’s greasy head, his mahogany irises twinkling despite his sneer.
“You forget yourself, brother.” Maxius’ fists clenched, knuckles bleeding, split red beneath the ash coating his umber skin. “Was my fist yestereve not answer enough? We’d sooner impale ourselves on Falstaff’s horns than come within a furlong of your stinking hole.”
“Maxius,” the fair-haired laurel warned, his steady voice cutting through Iagor’s squealing protests. The laurel levelled his gaze at Max. “We are in the Grand Templum, or have you so soon forgotten?”
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo.”
Hugging her knees, the small heathen beside him rocked, her battered arms looped around her calves, dress shredded.
Beneath the dust, her skin was mottled, blooms of black and purple bursting like flowers.
She peeked out from behind a curtain of dark hair, her eyes swollen and weeping.
The look of her was enough to make me wince.
I offered a smile, knowing all too well the unique pain of a fist, how tender her muscles and bones must be after such a beating.
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo,” she repeated, softer this time, the words distinctly un-Thromarrian.
I cleared my throat. “What she said,” I agreed, nodding and letting my head rest on the damp wall behind. “Duo-loosional to think any of that matters now, my friend. This be no holy house, but a knacker’s. Do not be fooled into thinking the gods have spared us our fate just yet.”
Hammers. Dust. Ash.
Shuddering, I drew in a breath through my nose, regretting it almost immediately as the char of fat and cloy of bodies wormed its way down my throat.
“Grand Templum or no, Roderiq,” Maxius continued, ignoring the woman. “He’ll know I’ve blasphemed all the same. I agree with the fair-faced pup…” I gave a lazy wave in acknowledgment. “The Blood God would not absolve us of our due.”
“It must have been Him,” Roderiq whispered, more to himself than anyone else. “Perhaps a gift…a mercy.”
It was a mercy my eyes were closed so he was spared their roll to the back of my head.
“Roderiq,” Maxius rumbled, his deep voice sharp. “Did what happened to the rest look like mercy to you?”
“Nay…” Roderiq sighed, breath rattling. “It did not.”
Silence joined the tallow in the air, Iagor’s wheezing the only respite from the sizzle of fat.
“Do you fancy she could be blessed? The grey laurel?”
My eyes shot open, and they landed on Roderiq.
Blood spilled onto my tongue, teeth digging into the split on my lip.
I sucked at it, enjoying the sting, anything to keep my mind from the image of her slung like a sack of grain over the Butcher’s shoulder, carted off to gods only knew where.
I wiggled my fingers, feeling the ghost of her there.
So fucking close—always so fucking close.
“You think her blessed?” Maxius asked, scoffing.
“How many cycles have I known thee, Roderiq?
And nothing from your tongue has been quite so moon-calved as that.
Why bless a woman when ‘tis known He prefers them silent?
Crumbling a tower, kindling a tree to nothing…
that is a blessing beyond the power of any druid alive. ‘Tis the work of a god, not man.”
“Woman,” I corrected before I could think better of it. “The work of a woman.”
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo.”
Clearing my throat, I schooled my face, licking each lip clean of blood. “Dear laurels,” I tutted, keeping my voice steadier than I felt. “What is the templum built of?”
“Our unyielding faith in the Blood God’s might and power,” Iagor roared, pounding his chest.
“Ovidian rock,” Maxius corrected, side-eying the toothless dolt between us.
“And what is Ovidus?” I pressed.
“The Heart of Thromarra. The Blood God’s sanctified—”
“A volcano,” Roderiq breathed, interrupting Iagor, his blue eyes widening.
“A volcano,” I affirmed. “A volcano that has not emptied its belly in an age.” Even Iagor’s walnut brain churned, his tongue poking from the corner of his drooling mouth.
“So yes, she could be blessed.” Ashara, I urged to yell.
Ashara! “Or…” I willed my heart to calm.
“Maybe, just maybe, the earth trembled and the sky fell because of what lurks below, the rivers of rock and fire beneath our feet. Maybe the Blood God had nought to do with any of it.” Relaxing my shoulders, I picked at a seam in my breeches.
“Worry not about a plague turning your blood to stone, brothers and sister.” I shot a glance at the heathen, who was no longer rocking.
“But rather a heat so great it’ll scorch it to steam.
Perhaps we are due a different sort of reckoning.
” I returned my eyes to the heathen, her irises like pits beneath the swelling of her lids.
“Duoloo,” she mimed without speaking, eyes locked on mine.
“But what of the tree?” Maxius asked, leaning forward around Iagor, still rapt and chewing his tongue, a vein popping in his temple.
“It burnt.” I shrugged. “It’s possible its roots were above an Ovidian crevice.”
“Hmm.” Roderiq’s elbows rested on his knees, pale skin peeking from beneath the tears in his shirt.
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo.”
“Shut ye heathen hole,” Iagor snapped at the woman, his reverie broken as he jabbed a dirty fingernail at her chest. “Ye speak a profane tongue, and mine ears bleed from its sound.”
“Duoloo. Duoloo. Duoloo!” she repeated, louder, words forced through her teeth.
“Dirty knave.” Iagor lurched forward, fisting one side of her dark hair and yanking her down.
“What the fu—” I started, making to stand and pry him off, Maxius already on his feet.
With a thud, Iagor’s head hit the wall, the woman leaping onto his lap with the speed of a wild cat, and claws to match.
Dark hair fanning out around her, she swallowed him in shadow, her fingers scraping at his ruddy skin wherever nails met flesh.
His muffled cries gave way to a rip, something bloodied and round slapping next to the toe of my boot.
“What in the pits is—” Roderiq’s question sputtered to nothing as I held it aloft in the candlelight, its cabbage leafed edges dripping with blood.
“Did she? Has she just…?” Roderiq stammered, jaw loose. “Is that his ear?”
I flung it to Maxius, wiping my tainted fingers down the side of my shirt. Making no attempt to catch it, the ear bounced off his chest, and with a plop, dropped into the depths of the bucket beside him, floating among the befoulments.
“Fuck.” I grimaced, feeling only the faintest beat of guilt under the urge to be sick.
Clawing, biting, and scratching, she tore him to ribbons, laughing whilst she did. Maxius and I circled them both, dodging her swipes.
“The due is rendered, woman!” Maxius implored, peeling her fingers from Iagor’s arm, only for her to latch onto his neck. “He’s a man, nay a meal.”
A sharp elbow to the balls had me grunting, eyes blurring with the agony of it. Arms looped round her waist, I hoisted her up, dragging her back to the opposite wall. She snarled and growled, fighting with everything she had to reach Iagor, who was quivering on the floor.
Clutching the hole in his head where his ear had once been, he gazed up at her, tears and snot streaming down his face.
“She’s mad!” he wailed through bleeding, tattered lips.
“She’s nae woman! She’s a feckin’ animal!
Fetch the acolytes! Paxiams! Hel—” His cry was cut short by a large, dark hand clamping over his mouth.
“Are you so eager to meet your maker once more?” Maxius hissed. “You call them in here, we pay the price. Tis’ you who needs to shut your godsforsaken hole.”
I nodded, wrestling to keep the heathen from charging at him once more. Widening my stance, I dodged the strikes of her heels, her aim impeccable.
“Are ye blind? She be a heathen!” Iagor yelped, crawling as he searched for his ear, hands patting the stone, feeling for its shape. I hadn’t the heart to tell him. “’Tis a sin worthy of penance that we breathe the same air, let alone bear witness to that vile tongue!”
A piece of gristle shot from the heathen’s mouth and landed on his cheek, a white lump freckling the blood. She calmed. He pinched it from his skin, feeling its grain under his fingers.
“I bite other one, yes?” she said. “Then you no have to hear me.” Her accent was thick, strong, and fuck me, if I didn’t relinquish my hold. Just a little.
“Paxia—”
The door swung open, the light from the hall blinding as it flooded the room. We turned towards it, eyes squinted, Iagor’s ruin of a face glowing crimson in its beam.
No clink of armour, but the brush of skirts heralded the curves of a woman shadowing the threshold. Features hidden in the shadows of a headdress, her freckled hand outstretched. Pointer curling, she ushered us forward, her other hand bringing a finger to her lips, bidding us silent.
“We nay have all day, spared laurels.”
That voice… I released the heathen, mindful of her bruises and the way my hands shook and tensed.
“Come.”