Arc 5: Chapter 18: Graveflower

Arc 5: Chapter 18: Graveflower

It took some doing, but we got Emma up the stairs and into the inner halls of the mansion.

Those halls were carpeted, lined in metal braziers and decorated with paintings and tapestries, all of it old and lavish as anything I’d seen in a king’s court. Otherwise there wasn’t much to distinguish it from countless other noble dwellings I’d been in.

Other than the brass pipes. They ran across the walls and ceilings like veins, riddled with holes of varying sizes and shapes. Did they all connect to that instrument in the foyer, I wondered?

Did the whole forest connect to this place?

We limped along in silence for a time. Emma, propped between me and Hendry, eventually broke it.

“If no one else is going to say anything, I will.” I got the sense she was mostly just distracting herself from her injuries. “What the hell was that back there, Hendry? Since when were you strong as an ogre?”

We went ten steps before Hendry spoke. When he did, his voice was subdued. “I’ll show you after we see to your legs.”

Emma didn’t press him. Soon enough, I found an open room with light inside. It turned out to be a comfortable bedroom, with a clean bed replete with a curtain and a smaller adjacent room for washing.

We got Emma into the bed, and I inspected the damage. Bad, as I’d thought. Not for the first time, I cursed that I’d lost my healing touch.

You managed to call on a High Art not half an hour ago, I told myself. Maybe that’s not as out of reach as you thought?

There were rolls of linen on a table, and other supplies. Hendry and I got to work, getting Emma’s legs clean, sanitizing the wounds, then wrapping them up. I didn’t question how this had all been readied so quickly. We were in a wizard’s sanctum, and I had seen stranger things.

“Your leggings are ruined,” I told her.

Emma lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not going to walk around without pants.”

Almost on cue, Hendry opened one of the huge mahogany wardrobes. There were dresses inside. Emma sighed.

“For now, just stay in bed. Maybe we can find something else.” I patted her on the shoulder before standing. Hendry and I were both covered in bite and claw wounds, which we tended to. When there was nothing left to do, Emma and I turned to Hendry.

Hendry shifted uncomfortably. “It’s complicated.”

“Our lives are complicated, Hunting.” Emma’s voice sounded heavy. Once the rage of battle had fully faded, exhaustion had taken its place. She’d lost a lot of blood, both from the wolves and her own Art.

Taking a deep breath, Hendry steeled himself and lifted a hand to his left shoulder. He’d stripped out of his coat and vest, leaving just a brown tunic beneath. After a moment’s hesitation, he pulled the collar down to show us his bare shoulder.

It revealed a gruesome sight. The flesh just beneath his collar bone was bruised nearly black and mottled, almost warped, forming a spiral shape of discolored tissue. It radiated out into angry scars, lumpy in some places and sunken in others. The bones of his shoulder and collar looked sharp and disfigured, as though straining against the skin.

I suspected it went further. And much of it looked like bad burns.

“That…” Emma swallowed, less flippant now. “That is where Jon Orley stabbed you?”

Hendry nodded. “Yes.”

He wouldn’t meet our gazes, his blue eyes fixed on some point in front of his feet. He licked his lips, then explained in a hasty, nervous voice.

“After I was wounded, I lay in bed for a long time. I don’t remember much of it, but… I remember pain. Strange dreams. Some of Orley’s spear got stuck in me. It fused to the bone.”

My own shoulder, the right, twinged. “Devil Iron.”

Hendry met my eyes. “You know of it?”

I gestured to my shoulder. “I got some of the scorchknight’s spear in me, too. My powers kept it from spreading. You could say it died before it could take root. I’m guessing it wasn’t the same for you?”

Hendry looked sick as he talked. “Over the weeks after that, it spread through my bones. It started with my shoulder, then took the whole arm, then…”

Emma shook her head, looking horrified. “Hen, are you saying… that all of your bones are made of iron now?”

When he nodded, my squire spoke in a strained voice I’d never heard from her before.

“How can you even stand!?”

“I got used to it,” Hendry said, looking ashamed. “It’s… heavy. And it still hurts, all the time. I get stiff, and if I’m still too long it hurts a lot. I don’t know how I can still move.”

I noted then how deep the shadows under his eyes were. I’d missed it before.

No, I just hadn’t paid the boy much mind. I felt ashamed of that, then.

“Devil Iron isn’t a natural substance,” I told him. “I don’t know much, but it’s a weapon crafted by the masters of the Iron Hell. I’ve never heard of it doing this before.”

Considering, I frowned and said, “I don’t understand, though. The clericons should have been able to cleanse you of the taint. They did perform an exorcism, right?”

Hendry shrugged. “It didn’t work.”

“But—”

His voice became flat. “It didn’t work.”

I let it go.

Turning to the door, I went three paces before Emma spoke at my back. “Where are you going?”

I paused at the door. “To find Catrin.” I pointed down. “You two stay here, look after one another.”

“We should stay together,” Emma argued.

“You can’t move,” I reasoned to her. “And I’m not going to leave Cat out there alone.”

Emma sighed and adjusted a lock of brown-black hair. “Very well. I suppose I shall play the helpless maiden, with my iron knight to defend me.”

“Don’t call me that,” Hendry said quietly. There was no heat in his voice, but he had a haunted look.

Emma studied him a moment, then nodded. “I won’t.”

Hendry sniffed and sat against the wardrobe, placing his sword down at his side. He’d collected it before we’d left the foyer. “I’ll keep watch,” he said to me. “Go find her.”

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As I navigated the winding halls of House Laertes, I took the time to actually think some things through.

Coming here had been foolish, but time running about in circles putting out fires had made me impatient, and no point denying it, desperate.

I’d made an enormous play, taken enormous risk, when I’d gone public to the Accord and thrown myself at the mercy of the nobility. I had put myself, Emma, Rosanna, and anyone else with any connection to me at terrible risk.

And along with that, I’d accepted a great responsibility.

It was simple, being the vagabond executioner. Failure had meant death, but I knew the world would go on. Someone else could take up the mantle, and those who’d once known me might never even learn about my fate. There had been a cold comfort in that.

No longer. Now failure meant that the enemies I faced hurt people I loved, and a society I’d sworn to protect. Markham had made me a knight again, and that meant something.

Maybe not what it did to others. The Accord, the monarchs and lordlings who governed it, God, faith, all those institutions, they were just names. Ideas, ones I felt neutral toward at best. But there were people within all that I cared for. Being a knight meant protecting them, being there for them.

If it came with a desk, paperwork, and scheming bureaucrats, I would accept and endure all of it.

But I needed to be better. Smarter, stronger, less prone to being tugged about on invisible strings. The Keeper had made a fool of me in our meeting, and in this place…

The walls of the mansion ran in winding turns. The brass pipes on the walls emitted strange sounds, as though the whole structure were quietly breathing. Abundant stairways ran up and down, connecting halls and oddly shaped rooms without apparent sense. I tightened my grip on Faen Orgis, retrieved after a brief detour once I’d been sure Emma would be alright.

I needed to prepare my people better, understand them better. Emma needed more training, and I had treated Hendry like an expendable tagalong. It wasn’t just about fighting skill. I needed to prepare them for the ancient dangers that permeated the world.

I needed to arm myself with more knowledge. No more settling for being the blunt instrument, the brute that Laertes had called me. There was too much at stake.

The hollow eyes of elaborately dressed nobles stared at me from the paintings lining the walls. They were exquisitely detailed, and most of the subjects wore archaic fashions generations or even centuries out of style. Some wore no clothes at all.

There were no servants, no guards. I didn’t even spot the telltale signs of ghosts.

“Alken.”

I froze, tilting my head towards an ajar door I’d almost passed. It was dark inside.

“Catrin? Is that you?” I didn’t quite trust this place not to play tricks on me.

“It’s me.”

I stepped toward the door, but some instinct stopped me. I felt danger, a sense of threat. The dark room seemed to exude cold, though all the manor held a chill.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

A long pause. “No. I got lost.”

“Can I come in?”

Another pause. “Might be better if you didn’t.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“That bastard pulled me into something. He said things to me. Showed me things.”

I heard a shuddering intake of breath.

“It’s alright,” I said. “Emma and Hendry are safe, and I won’t let him hurt any of you. Karog is here.” I tried for a smile. “Turns out Laertes is actually Lord Wesley, his patron.”

When she didn’t answer I asked, “Will you come out?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea right now. I’m… not in control.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t certain I understood. “I just want to know you’re alright. I’m not scared of you, Cat.”

“Liar.”

I waited several minutes. There came another shuddering breath.

“Alright. Just… alright.”

Moving slowly, I walked into the room. It seemed to be some sort of gallery, not much larger than the bedroom I’d been in before but lacking a bed or vanities. As my eyes brightened to clear away the shadows, I saw stands along the walls. Sculptures, all depicting humanoid figures. There were more paintings on the walls too, and some chairs. In one corner, I spotted a pedal harp worked from rich golden wood.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Can I give us some light?” I asked the room.

No response. Lifting my axe, I murmured a few words and made pale golden fire flicker across it. Those flames settled into the metal, making it glow.

Seeing the room better now, I found Catrin. She stood by the lone window, peeking through a gap on the side of the curtains. She leaned on the wall, her posture slumped. Judging by the lack of light coming through it, night must have fallen outside.

Catrin turned her head to face me. She had a distant look on her face, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Her neatly arranged coils of hair were disheveled now, forming a messy halo around her head that didn’t quite hide her tapered ears or the thinness of her features.

I let out a sigh of relief. “Cat.”

“Hey, big man.” Catrin smiled wanly. “What, thought I was a ghost?”

I’d considered it. Instead of saying as much I tilted my head toward the door. “Emma’s wounded. Hendry’s with her. The Count is keeping us here as his guests tonight.”

Catrin answered with a slow nod, still with that remote expression on her face.

I took a step closer and reached out with my free hand to her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re—”

She spoke in a curt voice. “Don’t touch me.”

I froze. “Alright. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, taking a steadying breath. She was breathing a lot, I noticed, each one looking deliberately spaced and full. Focusing on being alive, I realized.

“Don’t be sorry,” Catrin said. “I’m just… when he took me, the place I went… it’s hard to explain. It felt like I was there for hours.”

It had been less than one since we’d arrived in the manor. “Did he hurt you?” I asked, feeling a ripple of anger shoot through me.

“I never saw him,” Catrin said. “I was lost in this winding labyrinth. It was full of… things. Monsters, voices, shadows that weren’t shadows.”

She ran a hand through her hair, then hugged herself. “It was a lot. I freaked out, lost my calm. I just managed to get my glamour back up a bit ago.”

I knew she didn’t actually look like the attractive, lean commoner woman she seemed. I’d seen a glimpse of her true face once. A pallid, almost elfin thing with a mouth full of uneven fangs and crimson eyes.

“You don’t have to hide it from me,” I said quietly. “If it’s hard, I mean. I won’t think less of you.”

Catrin sniffed, glanced at me, then shuffled back against the wall. “I’m fine. Cross my heart.”

I knew she was lying, but didn’t want to press. Before I could say anything else, I felt a shudder across my back, and the distant beating of a great heart. Something else had entered the room.

“You should listen to the gilded knight,” Laertes rumbled from the door. “Do not hide your true self, child. This chameleon existence does not suit a Child of Ergoth.”

My hand clenched into a fist around my axe’s grip. I took a moment to wrestle control over myself, then turned to glare at the Count. “Leave her alone. You’ve done enough.”

The looming shadow of the vampire filled the doorway, hunching dramatically just to fit in the frame. His corpse eyes peered at me, mocking and hungry.

“All I have done is show her the folly of this half life,” Laertes said in his guttural, rhythmic growl. “Within my labyrinth, I peeled back her flesh to see the spirit beneath. Free and wild, yet she sells her body and affections for the pleasure of insignificant men, lying with them like a lowly bitch hound mewling for warmth.”

I could hear his rage quivering through the sonorous depths of his voice. “It is a mockery.”

Catrin spoke before I could. “If you wanted to fuck me, Count, you could have just said as much.”

I shot her a horrified look, but Catrin’s eyes were calm, remaining fixed on Laertes.

The Count scoffed. “I have no taste for the fragrance of unbloomed roses. This mortal mask you cling to diminishes you, little bud. You are no mongrel changeling to languish between two worlds. You were born of grave soil and Corpse Moon’s light.”

Catrin’s voice shot out with a cold anger I’d never heard in it before. “My parents were farmers. You don’t know a fucking thing about me.”

“I know you are starving,” Laertes crooned, his overlong fingers curling together in front of his chest as though clutching at a rope. “I know you feel the vestiges of your accursed mortality dying within you. You weaken yourself to delay the inevitable, but this cannot be avoided, graveflower.”

Catrin bared her fangs, thin and paltry looking compared to the wolf’s teeth cramming the Count’s mouth. “Shut up.”

“I only speak a truth,” Laertes continued, sounding perplexed. “I did not create this reality, graveflower.”

I stepped between them, clutching my shining axe tighter. “She asked you to leave her be, Count. I’m going to have to insist.”

Laertes’s ghostly eyes went to me, then flicked down to my axe. He drew his beckoning claws back into the folds of his robes.

“Such a strange damsel you have chosen to guard, knight of Seydis. She is no virtuous maiden to have earned such chivalry. Vermin and maggots have had their way with her.”

“If you insult her one more time,” I said in a very calm voice, “I will kill you.”

The Count’s voice hardened. “You would attack me after I have extended you guest right? The Alder’s fire would burn you past the brink of madness for that, paladin.”

For a long while, none of us said anything. The Count stood in the doorway, huge and silent, his eyes wide with an almost feral malevolence. Neither of the two vampires breathed, so only my own exhales disturbed the dangerous quiet.

Then, Laertes turned toward the hall. “I shall not disturb you further. We will speak in the morning, ser knight. Rest well.”

He glided off with the sound of fur and cloth brushing carpet. I let out a breath of relief, then turned to Catrin. She was still holding herself, her expression miserable.

“Let’s go,” I told her. “There are some rooms ready for us, and I want to check on the other two.”

She nodded. “Alright.”

I wanted to say more, to try and comfort her, but I could tell the Count’s words had shaken her. I decided to wait until she was ready to talk.

Instead I settled with, “I’m with you, Cat. Don’t listen to him.”

Catrin tossed me an uneasy smile. “He doesn’t scare me. Ugly cockwart.”

But I could tell she was afraid.