Chapter 10 #3
Elloven was more than ready to oblige, but then the Conductor... flashed, which was all she could think of to describe the way she had been standing on one side of them and then appeared on the other.
“There is only one Forum Obscura, and Forum Obscura is the singular sepulchral market,” the woman said.
“Right.” Jesstin pulled Elloven away from the stall, but the Conductor flashed again, blocking them. “Do you think you’re scaring me?”
“I already have,” the Conductor said lightly, almost maternally. “But you’re not afraid for yourself. Why did you bring her?”
“Because we’re partners.” Elloven couldn’t help herself. Even setting aside the grave uneasiness she felt around the Conductor, she was way out of line with the way she spoke to Jesstin. “And we’re leaving now.”
“If you leave now, you leave mapless. I am the keeper of maps, leastwise the one you need. How long did you search for the spiral before seeking me out? Are we ready to conduct business?”
Elloven looked to Jesstin for clarity, but he was as pale as chalk. “I have nothing to give you that you don’t already have,” he said through his teeth. “There’s no business to conduct.”
“I have but a single fragment of a very colorful soul!” The Conductor shook with her voracious laugh. “You have so much more to offer. And I, fortunately for you, have exactly what you need.”
“For the small price of another fragment of my soul?”
The Conductor offered another ridiculous curtsy.
“Jesstin.” Elloven tried to grab his gaze. “Absolutely not.”
He didn’t answer, but he hadn’t released his iron grip on her hand either. “What piece is it this time? My love for her?”
“No, nooooo.” The Conductor clutched one hand to her chest in offense. “If I were to bargain your love for her, then what would be left to take when you die?”
“Speak plainly, bitch,” Elloven demanded.
Jesstin started with a proud, subtle grin.
“I want your soul anchor.” The Conductor tapped her cane, and the swirl returned to black and white. “It’s not very exciting, only what determines where your soul goes upon the cessation of life.”
“I thought we all came here?” Jesstin asked in annoyance.
“To the Infinitum, yes, but it is a rather large place, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not large enough not to run into your ugly mug twice.”
“And here I believed you found my mien pleasing. Hm.” She flashed again but didn’t move. Instead, “she” became a portly man with blistering sores all over his body—wearing nothing but a poorly pinned diaper, overflowing with—
“Oh yes, how shocking. You think you’re the first man I’ve seen shit himself?” Jesstin seemed unfazed by the spectacle. The “man” burped, groaned, and flashed back into the disconcerting woman.
The Conductor sighed and shook her head at Elloven as if to say see what I must deal with? “Your soul anchor goes here.” Her thumb brushed the glowing knob atop her cane. “With all the others.”
“All the others? How many are in there?” Elloven asked, though she didn’t actually want to know.
“How high can you count, love?”
No, not like this. Not with her. We’ll find another way.
Elloven pivoted to leave and waited for Jesstin to follow, but he did the opposite. “You have a deal. But I’ll see your map first.”
It was not a grin etching itself across the creature’s face, nor was there a better word for it.
Elloven was so captured by the preternatural show, she failed to object to the unreasonable bargain, and Jesstin was already following the Conductor into a back room, which had not been there moments ago.
She’d be damned if she let him spend a moment alone with the creature, so she fixed her hand tight in his and went with him.
Jesstin could hardly hear his thoughts over the thunder rattling the eaves.
The map in front of him was tamped down at the corners with rocks he’d found in the havre’s garden.
It was deceptively simple, and the spiral was as clear as anything, just to the right of the center, but without the benefit of distance markers, and the unreliability of the territory, they could be walking for days. .. or years.
Elloven had been asleep for a while. When they’d unrolled the unwieldy vellum together, he’d brightened with each reveal while her eyes narrowed further in confusion.
She’s deceived you, she’d said, and it took a few moments and a puzzling exchange to realize that while Jesstin saw a map, she saw merely paper.
Was it another “gift” of his necromancy, that the details were visible only to him?
A trick of the Conductor’s magic? Elloven had, quite endearingly, tried everything to see what he was seeing, adjusting her eyes, angle, and the lighting, only to finally concede.
Jesstin had urged her to get some sleep and was surprised when she put up no argument.
If they’d taken the Conductor up on her offer to house them for the night, he doubted Elloven would have enjoyed sleeping in an oversized squirrel’s wheel.
Their havre for the night was a homey chalet with a garden and a courtyard, even a small pond with a gazebo built over the top. It was the kind of place he could see he and Elloven settling down in together and making a modest life.
It was good there was so much immediacy in their situation, because it kept his thoughts from drifting for too long.
Their lovemaking. How easy it had been to surrender a vow that seemed nonsensical in hindsight, when compared to how full Elloven had made his strange existence.
Of all the memories Mathias had stolen, it seemed the cruelest to have taken the one that had given him one of his first safe places, in a garden playing frogs with the girl who would one day save his life and give it purpose.
Jesstin scratched his head as he marked a few more X’s on the map, another potential route. A fresh clap of thunder jostled the table, and a rock rolled off, sending the corner of the map curling inward. He stuck the quill in his teeth and replaced the stone, but a sound drew his attention outside.
At first he thought, fiends, but those were always there, shrill and violent. What he heard was soft and haunting. He capped the ink and settled the quill and inched closer to the arched opening leading to the rainy courtyard.
Elloven was hunched over on a bench under the gazebo, sobbing quietly into her hands.
He had only once before seen someone cry the way Elloven was crying. Rhiain, after she’d thought her best friend, Tyreste, had died. Slack-jawed, bleary-eyed, chest shuddering, barely upright...
Jesstin’s splashing announced him, but she didn’t look up until he climbed the three steps into the shelter. When she did, her stare was fixed on something in the distance.
Jesstin wrapped her in his arms from the side. She flagged like a doll, numb and listless. “El, hey, hey.” He kissed her temple, already formulating potential answers before he asked the question. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
Elloven moved her arm to her nose, but he replaced his sleeve with hers and cleaned her up.
He used his other one to blot some of her tears.
She seemed surprised, but it was a muted response, no different than how she’d reacted to being held.
“You don’t see him?” She sounded like she was lost to a dream, in the process of waking.
“See who?” He smoothed her hair back. “Who?”
“Fabrien.” The name sounded like it had been crunched through gravel. Her voice was nearly gone.
“You had a nightmare?”
“He’s no nightmare.” Elloven licked her dry lips. “I’ve been so upset with you keeping secrets...” Tears raced down her cheeks, along the paths he’d dried. “While I’ve kept one of my own. Fabrien is here. He’s a fiend. He comes to me every night.”
Jesstin was entirely knocked back, though he shouldn’t have been.
It seemed inevitable that the monster who had haunted her life would infiltrate her death.
He wouldn’t ask why she hadn’t told him.
That, too, was obvious. “He can’t hurt you here,” he said, but they both knew Fabrien could steal her flame after he grew bored of tormenting her. “He won’t hurt you here.”
Her head lolled as she cried, gazing into the forest. Jesstin finally saw him. He couldn’t make out enough to have understood who Fabrien had been as a man, but his intent rolled off him like smoke coming down a mountain. “Promise me, Jess... please...” She couldn’t finish.
Jesstin didn’t need her to. Her fears were plenty valid because he’d been thinking of how to destroy the fiend from the moment she’d mentioned him.
“If he comes for you, I won’t even remember I made a promise.
I’ll destroy him. I’ll steal what’s left of his flame, and I’ll destroy him.
Then I’ll leave this place, travel to Whitechurch, and burn his fucking family and all their bloody trees to ash.
” He rested his head to hers and prayed she couldn’t feel his anger as keenly as he did.
“But I promise I won’t provoke him. Is that enough? ”
Elloven nodded and melted against him. In the distance, Fabrien’s glowing eyes remained a constant. “You didn’t have to come out here.”
“I will always find you when you need me.” He tilted her chin toward him. She allowed it, but her eyes remained downturned.
“I was afraid you’d do something impulsive, yes.
..” Elloven gently peeled his fingers from her chin.
“But what do you see when you look at me, Jess? That man crushed me, but I murdered him for it. And now look at what he’s become.
Even if you free the dead, do you suppose.
.. Do you suppose fiends like him will have a place wherever the others go?
Have I not damned a man, who tortured me for just seven years, to an eternity of suffering?
Is there any crime that deserves such a sentence? ”