scrivespinster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:38 am
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:38 am
WIP: Valkyrie Bags a Legend, Chapter 6
Chapter 6
And so I took up the hunt again.
The mandrake was easy enough to capture – I plugged my ears up with the wax they use to seal shrieks in bottles, and spent an afternoon digging in the marshes, with nothing worse than a few spiders and a lot of mud to trouble me. I couldn’t pay a singing teacher, but I could sing; I raised the little creature on Mahogany Hall showtunes and opera, and some time when I wasn’t looking, the Trickster taught it bawdy zailor’s songs that it repeated with delight to anyone who would listen. It didn’t happen that way, of course, but it makes me laugh now to think that I might have slain my enemy – or more likely been slain by him – to a rousing rendition of The Girls of Mr Veils.
The way to the convent was mine already, and I had no leads on the tooth. There had been one in prison a few years back, or so I heard, from a grizzled old ex-convict haunting the Medusa’s Head. It wasn’t there any longer, and that was as far as I could trace it. That left one avenue, aside from footwork and luck and patience. The one I feared the most, but greatest risk, sometimes, meant greatest gain, and there would be no avoiding it forever.
Black Wings Absinthe.
They sold it in Ladybones Road, I learned, in a small shop tucked discreetly out of the way. I was tall enough by then to buy a bottle of something stronger than milk without raising an eyebrow, even in a respectable establishment, but even so, the proprietor looked taken aback when he saw what exactly I had brought to the counter.
“You’ll want to be careful with that,” the man said, frowning like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. “It’s strong stuff. Not my first choice for a tipple, I’ll tell you honest. P’raps a nice gin would suit better?”
“I know what I’m buying,” I told him, and slid the asking price across the counter towards him.
“Then keep your hands clean and mind the constables,” he said. “And if you don’t do either, then you didn’t buy this from me.”
That wasn’t comforting. Neither was the way the stuff seemed to shift about in the bottle as if under its own volition, seeming almost to climb the inside of the condensation-beaded glass like a thing alive. Drinking it, the Tracker’s journal claimed, would let me see through the Vake’s eyes, and taste its thoughts. In that moment, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less, but it hadn’t been a matter of what I wanted for a long time. A window into my enemy’s mind was an advantage I couldn’t afford to throw away.
That evening, I shut myself up in an abandoned garret not far from Heorot, with the bottle of Black Wings and the Bodyguard for company. I knew better than to try the absinthe without anyone to keep watch, and he was the one I trusted most – both to defend me and, if worst came to worst, to defend himself against me. I made sure that he was armed, and that I wasn’t. And with no more to delay me, I settled in on a pile of slightly musty burlap sacks, took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and retrieved the bottle and a tin cup from my pack.
I gave the thick black liquid a dubious look, followed by an even more dubious sip. It was cold and cloying, with a taste like moss and copper, and – hell, I’ll say it plain. It tasted like blood. I had the horrible thought that the cannibals in the Face might have liked it, followed by the even more horrible thought that if I drank too much of the stuff, it might make me like they were. But there was something compelling about the taste, the way it coated the back of my throat and the frisson of icy energy that crawled along my nerves. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I wanted more. And just as much, I wanted to stopper the bottle, throw it away, and never touch the stuff again. Instead, I poured a measured draught, braced myself, and tipped it back.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just as I began to think that nothing would happen, the floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet, and darkness was rushing up to greet me. And then I was rushing through the darkness, wings spread, claws outstretched, prey below.
I wasn’t myself. I had some dim awareness of that, but it was too-quickly subsumed in sensation: cool air beneath my wings, wind in my fur, stalactites whipping past on either side. Hunger. The memory of deeper, colder skies than this. I had been chained too long beneath the earth, and these weak winds, this thin and bounded darkness, could never approximate what had been taken from me – but still I had the hunt, and the promise of a feast at the end of it, and I had the glory of flight. The northern wastes fell before me like a map outstretched on a table, and I could hear my voice rising in shrieking repetition as I closed on the small dark shape below. A fleeing beast – hot-blooded, mad with fear, not swift enough to outrun the shadow above it. It screamed as it fell. My teeth tore into its belly, and I satisfied, for a time, my hunger and my rage.
I came back to myself slowly, with a blinding headache behind my eyes and a foul aftertaste in the back of my throat. I was on the floor, looking up at the rafters and blinking away stars. Someone had bundled up a number of old sacks and placed them beneath my head for a pillow, and as I forced myself to sit and look around, I saw that the Bodyguard was crouched a few feet away, looking concerned. The beginning of a bruise was already darkening around his eye, and my stomach twisted at the sight of it. He had his cudgel at his side, but not, I thought, quite close enough to hand for my liking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You went – strange,” he said. “You said things, while you were under, about ripping and rending, and – ”
“I hurt you.”
“You went for the window. Like you were going to jump out of it.” He looked even more spooked by that than I felt. “Fought when I tried to stop you. But I pulled you back, and after that, you didn’t even move. Only stared, and spoke, like your mind was somewhere else.”
“I killed a horse, I think,” I said with a shudder. “Or the Vake did, and I watched it.”
Or I was it. The memory of copper flooded my mouth, and I reached for a jug of water, struggling not to retch. At least it wasn’t human. Thank all the gods, at least it wasn’t that. I drank, chasing away the last taste of Absinthe, and as I let the empty cup fall and drew my knees up to my chest, I felt the Bodyguard’s hand on my arm. I looked up again, frowning at the injury I’d done him – not serious, perhaps, but still by my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but he just laughed a little, clearly trying not to sound shaken, and told me he wasn’t that fragile.
“I’ve gotten worse scrapes in training,” he said. “We both knew that stuff was dangerous, and anyway – what tried to hurt me, I know it’s the thing you’re trying to kill. Not you.”
I wasn’t sure it was quite that simple, but he seemed to mean it, and I was grateful for that; all I could do in the meanwhile was take care and finish my mission.
Leaving that garret, I thought I heard something – the flap of wings, just faint enough to be maybe nothing – and saw a shadow pass between the false stars and the earth, and I was suddenly very glad that I had been wise enough not to touch the absinthe while in Heorot. But I dreamed, that night. Muddled dreams, hard to remember, but there was darkness in them, shot through with light, and there was terror and hunger and blood. I remember waking to the sound of wings outside the window – unmistakable, this time, too loud in the silence of the night. The room was cold, and the sweat was cold on my skin as I opened my eyes, caught in the hold of the sudden, absolute alertness that comes with fear. The grey cat slunk under the covers and lay shivering against my side, and I ran my fingers through her fur and tried very hard to be still and make no sound.
I couldn’t tell you how long I lay there. It might have been a minute or two; it felt like an hour. All I know is that I could hear some great beast circling above – I was horribly certain, remembering the Vake’s silent glide above Wilmot’s End, that it meant for me to hear – and that it passed in time, and as it left, some weight in the air seemed to lessen.
I threw back my covers and ran to the window, leaning out to look up and down empty streets lit at irregular intervals by flickering gaslamps, and up to the roof of the Neath, where there were only false stars and emptiness. If there had been anything there, it was gone now.
.
I went through the next day unsettled, looking continuously over my shoulder at the sky behind me, waiting for claws. Even keeping to crowded or covered places, I felt too aware of the fact that I was no less prey than that poor horse had been, and I couldn’t run half so fast. The Vake had my scent – if scent is the right word for it, and I don’t think it is. The blood had forged some chain between us; it knew me now, and I, in some small way, knew it as well.
I wondered – if I closed my eyes and emptied my mind, might I find its thoughts again? Could I follow that link back to dreaming, and learn more of my enemy that way? I didn’t think attempting that would be safe. It might be necessary.
I still had half a bottle of absinthe waiting for me at Heorot, though I wasn’t eager to revisit it, and after an afternoon spent unsuccessfully searching through one of the University’s less reputable natural history collections in hopes of a Vake-tooth lead, I swung back for home.
The journey itself was almost restful, after a day spent out of my depth among dusty books that even Benthic students gave little credit, but just outside the window, I stopped. I could hear voices within, engaged in a hushed argument.
“Don’t need to worry her,” the Slinger was saying. “You know how she worries.”
“And what if it’s something she should be worried about?” the Rough-Knuckled Poet said, and that was all I needed to hear. I rapped sharply on the window to announce my presence, then climbed through to find myself met with sudden silence and guilty looks from Poet and Slinger both.
“I caught the last of what you were saying,” I said. “What is it you think might worry me?”
I tried to reassure them with a smile, but I feared that I knew the answer already, and what the Poet said next confirmed it.
“You said to tell us, if we heard...” She hesitated. “The Slinger doesn’t think it’s anything. But there was something outside the window.”
“Could’ve been a bat,” the Slinger insisted.
“Awful big bat, then,” the Poet said, but I hardly registered what the Slinger said in reply. I felt cold, suddenly, and sick with the certainty that I‘d miscalculated. It wasn’t just myself I’d put in danger.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not nothing. It’s... you remember that I’ve been hunting the Vake? I did something dangerous, and caught its attention. It’s on my trail now, I think.”
“You think we’re being stalked by the Vake?” the Poet said. She sounded dubious, but a little scared too, and she was right to be.
“I think – I hope – that the only one being stalked is me.” I saw the look on both their faces, and hastily added, “I also don’t think it means to kill me yet.”
I wasn’t just trying to reassure them. I’d had time to think, since that morning, and one of the things I’d thought about was that if the Vake wanted me dead, it hadn’t lacked for opportunity. More than that, I could remember something of the shape of its mind; it liked to draw out the hunt, to wait and stalk and taste fear long before it tasted blood, and even if it counted me among its prey, I didn’t think any death I’d earned would come quickly. Which meant that I had time to redirect its focus from the Ringbreakers onto me, before slipping the city and hoping it wouldn’t follow.
That night at dinner, I laid out in sober terms what I suspected and what I meant to do about it. The Poet and the Slinger, as it happened, weren’t the only ones to have noticed the sound of wings in the dark – but when I suggested setting off alone to draw the Vake away from Heorot, the reaction was an immediate and nigh unanimous no.
“Like hell,” the Wolf-Hide said. “We hang together.”
“Even if it’s the gallows under discussion,” the Trickster added, and the Slinger leaned forward, elbows on the table and meal forgotten, and said, “You really think we’d all just let you die?”
“That’s not the plan,” I said. “Plan is, I’m the kind of bait that gets away.”
“Seems to me,” the Poet said, “that if one of us meant to use ourselves as any kind of bait at all, you’d be telling ‘em exactly what they could do with that idea.”
And she wasn’t wrong; we stood together, fought together, fell together if fate demanded. That was the promise I’d made to them – but I’d never had any intention of pulling them into this, and if that made me a hypocrite, better a hypocrite than the cause of their deaths.
Out of all of them, it was the Bodyguard who spoke in favor of my plan. I could remember how protective he had been, in the days after the Shieldmaiden left, and how much it bothered him when I neglected to sleep or put myself in danger. Now, he only waited for the others to fall silent, then said, “You trust her, don’t you, not to die so easily?”
The pause that followed was strained, but at last, the Poet nodded, and even the Wolf-Hide muttered that he couldn’t argue with that. They were afraid – and so was I – but they did trust me. After so many years of waiting, it was finally time to prove myself equal to the warrior they thought I was.
“If the plan works,” I said, “I’ll have to leave. I’m sorry about that, but I’m not worried about what’ll happen to the Ringbreakers when I’m gone. All of you have what it takes to stand alone, as hunters and as heroes.”
Another silence fell as my words sank in. The Wolf-Hide’s fist clenched around his fork, and he looked away, but not before I saw that it wasn’t anger he was holding back; the Trickster toyed with a piece of bread, trying to make it look like he didn’t care. The first to speak was the Tracker – usually quiet, but she noticed things, and didn’t put her trust in luck.
“You don’t think it might follow you?”
“I doubt it,” I said, though it was worth being careful. “There’s more prey in a city than at zee, and... truth is, I don’t think I’m that important yet.”
“Just so long’s you’re safe,” the Tracker said, and the others nodded, reluctantly but with some finality. And that was it – no take backs, no second thoughts, only the way ahead. I gave my bowl of mushroom and barley soup a half-hearted stir, focusing on the swirl of the broth so I didn’t have to look at their faces, and tried to be glad that it was settled.
“I’d meant to give you a better goodbye,” I said. I’d planned on a feast. I had wanted to make my departure something to celebrate, and to steal for myself one more night of light and warmth before setting out into the dark of the unterzee. What I left them with instead was worry, and no promise of anything better.
But that wasn’t strictly true, I realized. I did at least have something tangible to give them, which I’d been holding back until the time was right.
“Wait here,” I told them, and ran to retrieve a locked box from its hiding spot beside the journal and the Shieldmaiden’s letters. Monster hunting is only sometimes a profitable business, and we had always been more inclined to working without pay than most dockside toughs, but I’d been frugal with my share of what we earned. The few years I’d spent saving had left me with three hundred echoes, or thereabouts, put aside. The box was heavy enough with coins to clink when I set it down, and I saw the Bodyguard’s eyes widen as he looked at me. There would be no call for him to worry about food or light sources, at least, while I was gone.
Not all my secrets are harsh ones, I thought, and found myself smiling for the first time that night; this parting wasn’t my choice, but it would be what I made of it. And with that thought, I stood on the bench and lifted my glass in salute to all of them.
“Even our paths diverge for a time,” I said, “I won’t call this goodbye forever. But even if it is – I promise you one thing, it’s not the end of us. We hang together, like you said. We always will, no matter where we go, or how our stories end. We’ll always be Ringbreakers. And I’ll always be proud to call you friends.”
There was nothing else I had to say, but I think it might have been enough; I raised my glass once more, and all of us drank a toast like we had wine in our cups rather than water, before I took a seat again. In my stead, the Poet rose, said she had a story to tell and then told it – nothing to do with the Vake, just something sweet and haunting about three sisters on an island and a zailor who married the moon. After her, the Trickster took the stage with a farcical tale he’d heard backstage at Mahogany Hall, one about a contest between a cat and a snake that reduced the lot of us to laughter.
All of us, it happened, had a story or two, and all of us went ‘round the table and told them: urban legends and superstitions, the Wolf-hide’s narrow escape from a gang of Neddy Men, the Tracker and Slinger’s last adventure in the Marshes. Mine were tales of heroes and journeys, as if I might convince the others and myself through the telling alone that all would be well. In some ways, maybe I did. For a few hours, at least, I felt free of the shadow of wings, and even with the future hanging over us all, the present was bright. But all too soon, the night wore on, and the time for stories ended.
I wanted to allow myself to set out in the morning, but the thought of that hungry thing I’d dreamt of lingering around Heorot made my decision for me. I stood reluctantly to leave, and the Ringbreakers all gathered to say their goodbyes. We embraced as comrades in arms do, fiercely, with arms clasped and promises to be strong. The Trickster asked me to send him some contraband from Khan’s Shadow – didn’t matter what, so long as it was suitably illegal – and the Poet wanted riddles from Whither, if I happened to pass that way. The Bodyguard just hugged me fiercely and said, “Stay safe.”
“You too,” I told him, and “Take care of them. I’ll come back when I can.” And then I stepped away, unable to draw out my goodbyes any longer, and climbed out the window one last time.
Outside, the Flit was dark, but far from still. I could hear bats in the eaves, the creaking of a rope bridge as a courier raced by on some inscrutable business, the off-key rise and fall of drunken singing far below – familiar sounds, comforting in their way. The wind was blowing from the zee, heavy with the scent of salt and rain even this far inland, and I looked up at the roof and whispered a prayer to Storm. Whether or not the Fisher Kings’ god was on my side, it wasn’t on the Vake’s, and that was good enough for me. I allowed myself one last look back at Heorot’s lighted window, then hurried on.
Among my other belongings, I had the absinthe with me, and though my home was behind, I had a destination. I shut myself up in the same room where I had tasted it for the first time, locked the door and boarded up the window as best I could. And then, when I was sure the place was as secure as it could be, from inside and out, I brought the bottle to my lips and drank.
The dark washed over me like it had before, and I dreamed again of flying, and of red-tinged exhilaration. I knew what to expect, this time – the rushing winds, the city seen from above, the hunger – and I strived to keep enough distance to observe, or at least to remember more clearly. I wasn’t worried about being noticed; I wanted its attention on me, and away from the Ringbreakers. But all too soon, I was swept up in the flood of a mind greater and older than my own, and all I knew was the air around me and the sweep of buildings below. The part of me that was still me recognized the pagodas and monuments of Wilmot’s End; the part of me that wasn’t, just then, cared little for the names that prey gave their dwelling places. But I heard music that night, and woke with tears on my face, and I’m not sure the sorrow was only mine. It’s always easier, thinking there’s nothing to your enemy but blood and cruelty, but that doesn’t mean it’s always true.
Before I woke, though, I dreamed of turning east, over the Prickfinger Wastes, and flying, fast as I could, with little care for prey beyond what I could snatch from the ground as I winged overhead. For that night, what I wanted, more than blood and more than music, was to be home. An impossibility – stolen from me by treachery – only a cage to be found in the spires where I roosted. But there were other places, deeper, darker, mine alone. I saw carnival lights below, a glittering mirror to the false stars above, and I swung northward. Then I was diving past the Ferris wheel and down, through a black and jagged tunnel into a cave below the earth. The air was close and still, a cloak of velvet blackness; bones and weapons scattered the ground, and small sounds whispered and echoed, magnified by cavern walls. I belonged there. It was familiar, and with my wings wrapped ‘round myself and the illusion of voices soft in my ears, I wasn’t lonely.
When I opened my eyes, the details were already half-gone, but even as I started upright from where I’d fallen, I scrabbled for the journal and a stick of charcoal, and I sketched in rapid strokes a map of what I could recall. East and north, past carnival lights and deep into the earth... most of it was lost to me, but some remained. I remembered the Ferris wheel, the depths beneath; I remembered more than I wanted of the bones – but even those, I tried to fix in my mind. I might need all of this, one day. Or it might be that none of it would be any use at all, but there would be no knowing ‘til the time came, and I planned to take no chances. As my fingers skimmed the empty pages that came after my map, I remembered the journal’s final entry – The Carnival, tomorrow – and realized with a shiver that I might have just seen the place where the Steadfast Tracker died.
Him and others uncounted, their deaths unremembered except perhaps for the one who slew them. Myself, if I was incautious. I closed the journal and looked up at the cobweb-veiled ceiling, thinking of all those stories and all their endings, and of how there might well be more of them in the days between when I left and when I would be returning. It was wise to be patient. That didn’t mean it was easy.
.
I slept away from Heorot, those next few weeks, in bell towers and under slanted gables, haunted in the night by the sound of wings. The grey cat brought me news of the others, and carried messages from me in turn, reassuring them that I was safe and whole and still not mad. I was relieved to learn that no one had heard anything on their watch. Not even the cat herself had seen or heard or smelled a hint of the Vake’s presence around Heorot since I’d left it behind, and it had been long enough that I was sure the Ringbreakers had once again slipped beneath its notice. It wasn’t safe for me to stay, but it was safe for me to leave.
I took with me only the things I needed: the journal, the map, the mandrake, a spear that wasn’t just a sharpened broom. The rosary, and the Shieldmaiden’s letters, tied all in a bundle and wrapped in watertight leather. Nothing more than that. I felt the need to travel lightly; with so much waiting in London to call me back, it seemed that lightness was the only way to make it out.
The cat remained with the others. Heorot was her home now, and she had grown too old for wandering. But the night before I left for zee, she found me where I slept, up in the heights of Old Downy, and promised to walk with me in dreams. I was glad of that, for I feared that in drinking the absinthe, I might have invited something in that I wouldn’t be able to get rid of.
Like the Shieldmaiden did, I thought, and I wondered if maybe it was for the best that we had something now in common.
Chapter 5 here.
Excerpts from unposted chapters here (Valkyrie and Shieldmaiden reunion and here (Final battle).
Index page here.
And so I took up the hunt again.
The mandrake was easy enough to capture – I plugged my ears up with the wax they use to seal shrieks in bottles, and spent an afternoon digging in the marshes, with nothing worse than a few spiders and a lot of mud to trouble me. I couldn’t pay a singing teacher, but I could sing; I raised the little creature on Mahogany Hall showtunes and opera, and some time when I wasn’t looking, the Trickster taught it bawdy zailor’s songs that it repeated with delight to anyone who would listen. It didn’t happen that way, of course, but it makes me laugh now to think that I might have slain my enemy – or more likely been slain by him – to a rousing rendition of The Girls of Mr Veils.
The way to the convent was mine already, and I had no leads on the tooth. There had been one in prison a few years back, or so I heard, from a grizzled old ex-convict haunting the Medusa’s Head. It wasn’t there any longer, and that was as far as I could trace it. That left one avenue, aside from footwork and luck and patience. The one I feared the most, but greatest risk, sometimes, meant greatest gain, and there would be no avoiding it forever.
Black Wings Absinthe.
They sold it in Ladybones Road, I learned, in a small shop tucked discreetly out of the way. I was tall enough by then to buy a bottle of something stronger than milk without raising an eyebrow, even in a respectable establishment, but even so, the proprietor looked taken aback when he saw what exactly I had brought to the counter.
“You’ll want to be careful with that,” the man said, frowning like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. “It’s strong stuff. Not my first choice for a tipple, I’ll tell you honest. P’raps a nice gin would suit better?”
“I know what I’m buying,” I told him, and slid the asking price across the counter towards him.
“Then keep your hands clean and mind the constables,” he said. “And if you don’t do either, then you didn’t buy this from me.”
That wasn’t comforting. Neither was the way the stuff seemed to shift about in the bottle as if under its own volition, seeming almost to climb the inside of the condensation-beaded glass like a thing alive. Drinking it, the Tracker’s journal claimed, would let me see through the Vake’s eyes, and taste its thoughts. In that moment, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less, but it hadn’t been a matter of what I wanted for a long time. A window into my enemy’s mind was an advantage I couldn’t afford to throw away.
That evening, I shut myself up in an abandoned garret not far from Heorot, with the bottle of Black Wings and the Bodyguard for company. I knew better than to try the absinthe without anyone to keep watch, and he was the one I trusted most – both to defend me and, if worst came to worst, to defend himself against me. I made sure that he was armed, and that I wasn’t. And with no more to delay me, I settled in on a pile of slightly musty burlap sacks, took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and retrieved the bottle and a tin cup from my pack.
I gave the thick black liquid a dubious look, followed by an even more dubious sip. It was cold and cloying, with a taste like moss and copper, and – hell, I’ll say it plain. It tasted like blood. I had the horrible thought that the cannibals in the Face might have liked it, followed by the even more horrible thought that if I drank too much of the stuff, it might make me like they were. But there was something compelling about the taste, the way it coated the back of my throat and the frisson of icy energy that crawled along my nerves. I wouldn’t say I liked it, but I wanted more. And just as much, I wanted to stopper the bottle, throw it away, and never touch the stuff again. Instead, I poured a measured draught, braced myself, and tipped it back.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just as I began to think that nothing would happen, the floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet, and darkness was rushing up to greet me. And then I was rushing through the darkness, wings spread, claws outstretched, prey below.
I wasn’t myself. I had some dim awareness of that, but it was too-quickly subsumed in sensation: cool air beneath my wings, wind in my fur, stalactites whipping past on either side. Hunger. The memory of deeper, colder skies than this. I had been chained too long beneath the earth, and these weak winds, this thin and bounded darkness, could never approximate what had been taken from me – but still I had the hunt, and the promise of a feast at the end of it, and I had the glory of flight. The northern wastes fell before me like a map outstretched on a table, and I could hear my voice rising in shrieking repetition as I closed on the small dark shape below. A fleeing beast – hot-blooded, mad with fear, not swift enough to outrun the shadow above it. It screamed as it fell. My teeth tore into its belly, and I satisfied, for a time, my hunger and my rage.
I came back to myself slowly, with a blinding headache behind my eyes and a foul aftertaste in the back of my throat. I was on the floor, looking up at the rafters and blinking away stars. Someone had bundled up a number of old sacks and placed them beneath my head for a pillow, and as I forced myself to sit and look around, I saw that the Bodyguard was crouched a few feet away, looking concerned. The beginning of a bruise was already darkening around his eye, and my stomach twisted at the sight of it. He had his cudgel at his side, but not, I thought, quite close enough to hand for my liking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You went – strange,” he said. “You said things, while you were under, about ripping and rending, and – ”
“I hurt you.”
“You went for the window. Like you were going to jump out of it.” He looked even more spooked by that than I felt. “Fought when I tried to stop you. But I pulled you back, and after that, you didn’t even move. Only stared, and spoke, like your mind was somewhere else.”
“I killed a horse, I think,” I said with a shudder. “Or the Vake did, and I watched it.”
Or I was it. The memory of copper flooded my mouth, and I reached for a jug of water, struggling not to retch. At least it wasn’t human. Thank all the gods, at least it wasn’t that. I drank, chasing away the last taste of Absinthe, and as I let the empty cup fall and drew my knees up to my chest, I felt the Bodyguard’s hand on my arm. I looked up again, frowning at the injury I’d done him – not serious, perhaps, but still by my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but he just laughed a little, clearly trying not to sound shaken, and told me he wasn’t that fragile.
“I’ve gotten worse scrapes in training,” he said. “We both knew that stuff was dangerous, and anyway – what tried to hurt me, I know it’s the thing you’re trying to kill. Not you.”
I wasn’t sure it was quite that simple, but he seemed to mean it, and I was grateful for that; all I could do in the meanwhile was take care and finish my mission.
Leaving that garret, I thought I heard something – the flap of wings, just faint enough to be maybe nothing – and saw a shadow pass between the false stars and the earth, and I was suddenly very glad that I had been wise enough not to touch the absinthe while in Heorot. But I dreamed, that night. Muddled dreams, hard to remember, but there was darkness in them, shot through with light, and there was terror and hunger and blood. I remember waking to the sound of wings outside the window – unmistakable, this time, too loud in the silence of the night. The room was cold, and the sweat was cold on my skin as I opened my eyes, caught in the hold of the sudden, absolute alertness that comes with fear. The grey cat slunk under the covers and lay shivering against my side, and I ran my fingers through her fur and tried very hard to be still and make no sound.
I couldn’t tell you how long I lay there. It might have been a minute or two; it felt like an hour. All I know is that I could hear some great beast circling above – I was horribly certain, remembering the Vake’s silent glide above Wilmot’s End, that it meant for me to hear – and that it passed in time, and as it left, some weight in the air seemed to lessen.
I threw back my covers and ran to the window, leaning out to look up and down empty streets lit at irregular intervals by flickering gaslamps, and up to the roof of the Neath, where there were only false stars and emptiness. If there had been anything there, it was gone now.
.
I went through the next day unsettled, looking continuously over my shoulder at the sky behind me, waiting for claws. Even keeping to crowded or covered places, I felt too aware of the fact that I was no less prey than that poor horse had been, and I couldn’t run half so fast. The Vake had my scent – if scent is the right word for it, and I don’t think it is. The blood had forged some chain between us; it knew me now, and I, in some small way, knew it as well.
I wondered – if I closed my eyes and emptied my mind, might I find its thoughts again? Could I follow that link back to dreaming, and learn more of my enemy that way? I didn’t think attempting that would be safe. It might be necessary.
I still had half a bottle of absinthe waiting for me at Heorot, though I wasn’t eager to revisit it, and after an afternoon spent unsuccessfully searching through one of the University’s less reputable natural history collections in hopes of a Vake-tooth lead, I swung back for home.
The journey itself was almost restful, after a day spent out of my depth among dusty books that even Benthic students gave little credit, but just outside the window, I stopped. I could hear voices within, engaged in a hushed argument.
“Don’t need to worry her,” the Slinger was saying. “You know how she worries.”
“And what if it’s something she should be worried about?” the Rough-Knuckled Poet said, and that was all I needed to hear. I rapped sharply on the window to announce my presence, then climbed through to find myself met with sudden silence and guilty looks from Poet and Slinger both.
“I caught the last of what you were saying,” I said. “What is it you think might worry me?”
I tried to reassure them with a smile, but I feared that I knew the answer already, and what the Poet said next confirmed it.
“You said to tell us, if we heard...” She hesitated. “The Slinger doesn’t think it’s anything. But there was something outside the window.”
“Could’ve been a bat,” the Slinger insisted.
“Awful big bat, then,” the Poet said, but I hardly registered what the Slinger said in reply. I felt cold, suddenly, and sick with the certainty that I‘d miscalculated. It wasn’t just myself I’d put in danger.
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s not nothing. It’s... you remember that I’ve been hunting the Vake? I did something dangerous, and caught its attention. It’s on my trail now, I think.”
“You think we’re being stalked by the Vake?” the Poet said. She sounded dubious, but a little scared too, and she was right to be.
“I think – I hope – that the only one being stalked is me.” I saw the look on both their faces, and hastily added, “I also don’t think it means to kill me yet.”
I wasn’t just trying to reassure them. I’d had time to think, since that morning, and one of the things I’d thought about was that if the Vake wanted me dead, it hadn’t lacked for opportunity. More than that, I could remember something of the shape of its mind; it liked to draw out the hunt, to wait and stalk and taste fear long before it tasted blood, and even if it counted me among its prey, I didn’t think any death I’d earned would come quickly. Which meant that I had time to redirect its focus from the Ringbreakers onto me, before slipping the city and hoping it wouldn’t follow.
That night at dinner, I laid out in sober terms what I suspected and what I meant to do about it. The Poet and the Slinger, as it happened, weren’t the only ones to have noticed the sound of wings in the dark – but when I suggested setting off alone to draw the Vake away from Heorot, the reaction was an immediate and nigh unanimous no.
“Like hell,” the Wolf-Hide said. “We hang together.”
“Even if it’s the gallows under discussion,” the Trickster added, and the Slinger leaned forward, elbows on the table and meal forgotten, and said, “You really think we’d all just let you die?”
“That’s not the plan,” I said. “Plan is, I’m the kind of bait that gets away.”
“Seems to me,” the Poet said, “that if one of us meant to use ourselves as any kind of bait at all, you’d be telling ‘em exactly what they could do with that idea.”
And she wasn’t wrong; we stood together, fought together, fell together if fate demanded. That was the promise I’d made to them – but I’d never had any intention of pulling them into this, and if that made me a hypocrite, better a hypocrite than the cause of their deaths.
Out of all of them, it was the Bodyguard who spoke in favor of my plan. I could remember how protective he had been, in the days after the Shieldmaiden left, and how much it bothered him when I neglected to sleep or put myself in danger. Now, he only waited for the others to fall silent, then said, “You trust her, don’t you, not to die so easily?”
The pause that followed was strained, but at last, the Poet nodded, and even the Wolf-Hide muttered that he couldn’t argue with that. They were afraid – and so was I – but they did trust me. After so many years of waiting, it was finally time to prove myself equal to the warrior they thought I was.
“If the plan works,” I said, “I’ll have to leave. I’m sorry about that, but I’m not worried about what’ll happen to the Ringbreakers when I’m gone. All of you have what it takes to stand alone, as hunters and as heroes.”
Another silence fell as my words sank in. The Wolf-Hide’s fist clenched around his fork, and he looked away, but not before I saw that it wasn’t anger he was holding back; the Trickster toyed with a piece of bread, trying to make it look like he didn’t care. The first to speak was the Tracker – usually quiet, but she noticed things, and didn’t put her trust in luck.
“You don’t think it might follow you?”
“I doubt it,” I said, though it was worth being careful. “There’s more prey in a city than at zee, and... truth is, I don’t think I’m that important yet.”
“Just so long’s you’re safe,” the Tracker said, and the others nodded, reluctantly but with some finality. And that was it – no take backs, no second thoughts, only the way ahead. I gave my bowl of mushroom and barley soup a half-hearted stir, focusing on the swirl of the broth so I didn’t have to look at their faces, and tried to be glad that it was settled.
“I’d meant to give you a better goodbye,” I said. I’d planned on a feast. I had wanted to make my departure something to celebrate, and to steal for myself one more night of light and warmth before setting out into the dark of the unterzee. What I left them with instead was worry, and no promise of anything better.
But that wasn’t strictly true, I realized. I did at least have something tangible to give them, which I’d been holding back until the time was right.
“Wait here,” I told them, and ran to retrieve a locked box from its hiding spot beside the journal and the Shieldmaiden’s letters. Monster hunting is only sometimes a profitable business, and we had always been more inclined to working without pay than most dockside toughs, but I’d been frugal with my share of what we earned. The few years I’d spent saving had left me with three hundred echoes, or thereabouts, put aside. The box was heavy enough with coins to clink when I set it down, and I saw the Bodyguard’s eyes widen as he looked at me. There would be no call for him to worry about food or light sources, at least, while I was gone.
Not all my secrets are harsh ones, I thought, and found myself smiling for the first time that night; this parting wasn’t my choice, but it would be what I made of it. And with that thought, I stood on the bench and lifted my glass in salute to all of them.
“Even our paths diverge for a time,” I said, “I won’t call this goodbye forever. But even if it is – I promise you one thing, it’s not the end of us. We hang together, like you said. We always will, no matter where we go, or how our stories end. We’ll always be Ringbreakers. And I’ll always be proud to call you friends.”
There was nothing else I had to say, but I think it might have been enough; I raised my glass once more, and all of us drank a toast like we had wine in our cups rather than water, before I took a seat again. In my stead, the Poet rose, said she had a story to tell and then told it – nothing to do with the Vake, just something sweet and haunting about three sisters on an island and a zailor who married the moon. After her, the Trickster took the stage with a farcical tale he’d heard backstage at Mahogany Hall, one about a contest between a cat and a snake that reduced the lot of us to laughter.
All of us, it happened, had a story or two, and all of us went ‘round the table and told them: urban legends and superstitions, the Wolf-hide’s narrow escape from a gang of Neddy Men, the Tracker and Slinger’s last adventure in the Marshes. Mine were tales of heroes and journeys, as if I might convince the others and myself through the telling alone that all would be well. In some ways, maybe I did. For a few hours, at least, I felt free of the shadow of wings, and even with the future hanging over us all, the present was bright. But all too soon, the night wore on, and the time for stories ended.
I wanted to allow myself to set out in the morning, but the thought of that hungry thing I’d dreamt of lingering around Heorot made my decision for me. I stood reluctantly to leave, and the Ringbreakers all gathered to say their goodbyes. We embraced as comrades in arms do, fiercely, with arms clasped and promises to be strong. The Trickster asked me to send him some contraband from Khan’s Shadow – didn’t matter what, so long as it was suitably illegal – and the Poet wanted riddles from Whither, if I happened to pass that way. The Bodyguard just hugged me fiercely and said, “Stay safe.”
“You too,” I told him, and “Take care of them. I’ll come back when I can.” And then I stepped away, unable to draw out my goodbyes any longer, and climbed out the window one last time.
Outside, the Flit was dark, but far from still. I could hear bats in the eaves, the creaking of a rope bridge as a courier raced by on some inscrutable business, the off-key rise and fall of drunken singing far below – familiar sounds, comforting in their way. The wind was blowing from the zee, heavy with the scent of salt and rain even this far inland, and I looked up at the roof and whispered a prayer to Storm. Whether or not the Fisher Kings’ god was on my side, it wasn’t on the Vake’s, and that was good enough for me. I allowed myself one last look back at Heorot’s lighted window, then hurried on.
Among my other belongings, I had the absinthe with me, and though my home was behind, I had a destination. I shut myself up in the same room where I had tasted it for the first time, locked the door and boarded up the window as best I could. And then, when I was sure the place was as secure as it could be, from inside and out, I brought the bottle to my lips and drank.
The dark washed over me like it had before, and I dreamed again of flying, and of red-tinged exhilaration. I knew what to expect, this time – the rushing winds, the city seen from above, the hunger – and I strived to keep enough distance to observe, or at least to remember more clearly. I wasn’t worried about being noticed; I wanted its attention on me, and away from the Ringbreakers. But all too soon, I was swept up in the flood of a mind greater and older than my own, and all I knew was the air around me and the sweep of buildings below. The part of me that was still me recognized the pagodas and monuments of Wilmot’s End; the part of me that wasn’t, just then, cared little for the names that prey gave their dwelling places. But I heard music that night, and woke with tears on my face, and I’m not sure the sorrow was only mine. It’s always easier, thinking there’s nothing to your enemy but blood and cruelty, but that doesn’t mean it’s always true.
Before I woke, though, I dreamed of turning east, over the Prickfinger Wastes, and flying, fast as I could, with little care for prey beyond what I could snatch from the ground as I winged overhead. For that night, what I wanted, more than blood and more than music, was to be home. An impossibility – stolen from me by treachery – only a cage to be found in the spires where I roosted. But there were other places, deeper, darker, mine alone. I saw carnival lights below, a glittering mirror to the false stars above, and I swung northward. Then I was diving past the Ferris wheel and down, through a black and jagged tunnel into a cave below the earth. The air was close and still, a cloak of velvet blackness; bones and weapons scattered the ground, and small sounds whispered and echoed, magnified by cavern walls. I belonged there. It was familiar, and with my wings wrapped ‘round myself and the illusion of voices soft in my ears, I wasn’t lonely.
When I opened my eyes, the details were already half-gone, but even as I started upright from where I’d fallen, I scrabbled for the journal and a stick of charcoal, and I sketched in rapid strokes a map of what I could recall. East and north, past carnival lights and deep into the earth... most of it was lost to me, but some remained. I remembered the Ferris wheel, the depths beneath; I remembered more than I wanted of the bones – but even those, I tried to fix in my mind. I might need all of this, one day. Or it might be that none of it would be any use at all, but there would be no knowing ‘til the time came, and I planned to take no chances. As my fingers skimmed the empty pages that came after my map, I remembered the journal’s final entry – The Carnival, tomorrow – and realized with a shiver that I might have just seen the place where the Steadfast Tracker died.
Him and others uncounted, their deaths unremembered except perhaps for the one who slew them. Myself, if I was incautious. I closed the journal and looked up at the cobweb-veiled ceiling, thinking of all those stories and all their endings, and of how there might well be more of them in the days between when I left and when I would be returning. It was wise to be patient. That didn’t mean it was easy.
.
I slept away from Heorot, those next few weeks, in bell towers and under slanted gables, haunted in the night by the sound of wings. The grey cat brought me news of the others, and carried messages from me in turn, reassuring them that I was safe and whole and still not mad. I was relieved to learn that no one had heard anything on their watch. Not even the cat herself had seen or heard or smelled a hint of the Vake’s presence around Heorot since I’d left it behind, and it had been long enough that I was sure the Ringbreakers had once again slipped beneath its notice. It wasn’t safe for me to stay, but it was safe for me to leave.
I took with me only the things I needed: the journal, the map, the mandrake, a spear that wasn’t just a sharpened broom. The rosary, and the Shieldmaiden’s letters, tied all in a bundle and wrapped in watertight leather. Nothing more than that. I felt the need to travel lightly; with so much waiting in London to call me back, it seemed that lightness was the only way to make it out.
The cat remained with the others. Heorot was her home now, and she had grown too old for wandering. But the night before I left for zee, she found me where I slept, up in the heights of Old Downy, and promised to walk with me in dreams. I was glad of that, for I feared that in drinking the absinthe, I might have invited something in that I wouldn’t be able to get rid of.
Like the Shieldmaiden did, I thought, and I wondered if maybe it was for the best that we had something now in common.
Chapter 5 here.
Excerpts from unposted chapters here (Valkyrie and Shieldmaiden reunion and here (Final battle).
Index page here.