Blood Song

Vaelin’s stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch and he realised he was about to vomit. “Going outside,” he mumbled, rising and making for the door on legs that seemed to have lost the ability to walk in a straight line.

The air outside chilled his lungs and made his nausea recede a little, but he was still obliged to spend a few minutes heaving into the gutter. Afterwards he rested his back against the tavern wall and sank slowly onto the cobbles, his breath steaming in the frigid air. My wife, the tall man had said. Maybe he had been calling to her. Or summoning a final memory as he struggled to take the image of her face with him into the beyond.

“A man with so many enemies shouldn’t make himself so vulnerable.”

The man standing over him was of average height but well built, with a lean, deeply lined face and a piercing stare.

“Erlin,” Vaelin said, releasing the hilt of his knife. “You don’t look any different.” He gazed blearily around the empty street. “Did I pass out? Are you here?”

“I’m here.” Erlin reached down to offer him a hand. “And I think you’ve had enough for one night.”

Vaelin took the hand and levered himself to his feet with difficulty. To his surprise he found he was at least half a foot taller than Erlin. When last they met he had barely come up to his shoulder.

“Thought you’d be a tall one,” Erlin said.

“Sella?” Vaelin asked.

“Sella’s fine, last I saw her. I know she would want me to thank you for what you did for us.”

I’ll fight but I won’t murder. His boyhood resolve coming back to him, the promise he had made to himself after saving them in the wild. I’ll kill men who face me in battle but I won’t take the sword to innocents. It felt so hollow now, so naïve. He remembered his disgust at Brother Makril’s tales of murdered Deniers and wondered if there was truly any difference between them now.

“I’ve still got her scarf,” he said, trying to force his thoughts in a more comfortable direction. “Could you take it to her?” He fished clumsily inside his shirt for the scarf.

“I’m not sure I could find her if I chose to. Besides, I think she would want you to keep it.” He took Vaelin’s elbow and guided him away from the tavern. “Walk with me for a while. It should clear your head. And there is much I would like to tell you.”

They walked through the empty streets of the western quarter, tracing a route through the rows of workshops that characterised this as the craftsman’s district. By the time they reached the river Vaelin knew from the ache building at the back of his skull and the increased steadiness of his legs that he was starting to sober up. They paused on the towpath overlooking the river, gazing down at the moonlight playing on the currents churning the ink black water.

“When I first came here,” Erlin said. “The river stank so bad you couldn’t go near it. All the waste of this city would flow into it before they built the sewers. Now it’s so clean you can drink from it.”

“I saw you,” Vaelin said. “At the Summertide Fair, four years ago. You were watching a puppet show.”

“Yes. I had business there.” It was clear from his tone he wasn’t about to elaborate on what type of business.

“You risk much coming here. It’s likely Brother Makril is still out hunting you somewhere. He’s not a man to give up a hunt.”

“True enough, he caught me last winter.”

“Then how..?”

“It’s a very long tale. In short he cornered me on a mountainside in Renfael. We fought, I lost, he let me go.”

“He let you go?”

“Yes. I was fairly surprised myself.”

“Did he say why?”

“He didn’t say much of anything at all. Left me tied up through the night whilst he sat by the fire and drank himself unconscious. After a while I passed out from the beating he’d given me. When I woke in the morning my bonds were untied and he was gone.”

Vaelin remembered the tears shining in Makril’s eyes. Maybe he was a better man than I judged him to be.

“I saw you fight today,” Erlin told him.

Vaelin felt the ache at the base of his skull deepen. “You must be rich to have afforded a ticket.”

“Hardly. There’s a way into the Circle few know of, a passage under the walls that affords a good few of the arena.”

Silence stretched between them. Vaelin had no wish to discuss his test and was increasingly preoccupied with the suspicion that he was about to throw up again. “You said you had something to tell me,” he said, mainly in hope that further conversation would distract him from the burgeoning nausea in his gut.

“One of the men you killed, he had a wife.”

“I know. He told me.” He glanced at Erlin, noting the intense scrutiny in his eyes. “You knew him?”

“Not well. My acquaintance was with his wife. She has assisted me in the past. I count her as a friend.”

“She’s a Denier?”

“You would call her that. She calls herself Quester.”

“And her husband was also part of this… belief?”