3
“It aren’t that bad if you ignore the flies.”
Tylar studied the moving feast that was his meal. Flies coated the stew of gristle and fat. The crust of bread atop it looked to be milled more from mold than flour. But he’d had worse. He soaked the hard bread into the broth, trying to soften the crust enough to chew. Tiny worms used the bread as a raft, climbing aboard.
“What about these maggots?” he asked sourly, shaking the crust clean of the squiggling stowaways.
“Nothing wrong with ’em. Them’s the only thing that gives this stew any taste.”
Tylar bit into the bread and glanced to the ragged rat of a man who had joined him in his cell that morning, tossed in naked and striped with whippings across his back. A head shorter than Tylar, he was all bone and beard. He set upon the meal like a hinter-king upon a feast. From the gray hairs laced in his red beard, he was not a young man, but what little muscle on him was still hard. About a decade older than myself, Tylar judged.
The prisoner noted his attention. “Name’s Rogger,” he mumbled over the edge of his bowl.
“Tylar.”
“So how’s a Shadowknight end up here?” The man touched three fingers to the corner of his eye, indicating Tylar’s tattoos.
“Apparently I killed a god.”
Rogger choked out a gobbet of gristle. “You! So you’re the one!”
Tylar glanced up to the barred window high on the stone wall. He had been imprisoned here seven days. He’d not had one visitor until now.
“No wonder there were so many guards in the halls,” Rogger continued, his face buried in his meal, spitting out pieces of bone as punctuation. “I even spotted a pair of bloodnullers at the end of each hall, reeking and covered in shite.”
Tylar nodded. Bloodnullers were smeared in a god’s black bile, their soft solids. Such a blessing granted the power to vanquish the Grace of a person or object with the mere touch of a single finger. They were stationed to keep Tylar in check, in case he attempted to use Dark Graces to escape. Their continued presence seemed a waste since they had already run their hands over his entire body when he first arrived here in shackles. If he’d had any hidden Graces, they would have been abolished at that time.
Still, Tylar understood their worry. While occasional rogue gods had been killed, never had one of the Hundred been slain. No one was taking any chances.
Rogger coughed a piece of gristle loose from his throat and nodded at Tylar. “It seems they must crowd all their god-sinners into the same damn cell on this cursed island.”
Tylar returned his attention fully to the man. “God-sinner? You? What did you do?”
He laughed. “I was caught sneaking into ol’ Balger’s place, trying to nick a bit from the bastard’s vault.”
“At Foulsham Dell?” Tylar asked, eyebrows rising. Balger was one of the seven gods that shared the First Land. His settled realm, Foulsham Dell, lay at the foot of the Middleback Range, bordering the wilds of a hinterland, where rogue gods roamed and no law governed. The Dell was a place of murderers, pirates, and scoundrels. And the god Balger was the worst of the bunch, known equally for his debaucheries and his cruelties. He was as close to a rogue as any of the hundred settled gods. His entire realm made Punt seem a tame and civilized place.
Tylar eyed the man, wondering what sort of thief tried to steal from such a god’s larder.
“And I would’ve made it out of there,” Rogger added, “if it hadn’t been for some handmaiden coming to the vault to deposit a jar full of her lord’s blessed piss.”
“A jar? You mean a repostilary?” Shock rang in his voice. Repostilary jars were vessels of a god’s humoral fluids, sacred beyond measure, handled only by handmaidens and handmen.
Rogger nodded and laughed again, spraying spittle out his beard. “Apparently ol’ Balger has trouble holding his bladder throughout the night.”
“So you were caught?”
As he ate, the man tilted to the side, baring his right buttock. A brand, long healed, had been burned into the flesh:
Tylar eyed the sigil. It was ancient Littick. “Thief,” he read aloud. “I don’t understand. How did you end up in a dungeon on the Summering Isles, a thousand reaches from the Dell?”
Rogger finished his bowl and gingerly settled back against the wall, wincing from his whipping. “Because of you, now that I crank on it.”
“Me?”
Rogger lifted his arms and exposed the undersides. More Littick sigils lay burned into the thief’s skin, aligned in neat rows.
From his training as a Shadowknight, Tylar recognized them: all names of gods. “Balger’s punishment…” he mumbled, sickened.
“A pilgrimage,” Rogger conceded sourly.
It was a cruel judgment, and not unexpected coming from a god of Balger’s ilk. As punishment, Rogger had been marked and exiled, forced to travel from god-realm to god-realm, sentenced to collect a certain number of brands. Only after you were properly marked could you return to your home and family.
“How many gods were you assigned?”
Rogger sighed, lowering his arms. “Remember. It was against Balger I sinned.”
Tylar’s eyes grew wider. “He didn’t…”
“A full pilgrimage, no less.”
“ All the gods?”
“Every blessed one of them. All one hundred.”
Tylar finally understood why Rogger was imprisoned here. “And with Meeryn dead, you can’t complete your punishment.”
“Once I learned of her death, I tried to escape, but that’s hard to do when you’re standing between two guards, knocking on the damn gates to Meeryn’s castillion. They snatched me up, whipped me thrice for the rudeness, and tossed me in with you.”
“What’re they going to do with you?”
“The usual choices I imagine: hanging, garroting, impaling.”
They were the three standard punishments meted to a pilgrim who failed in his journeys and tried to settle somewhere else.
“I think I’ll go with hanging. Garroting is too slow, and as for impaling, I’d prefer not to have anything shoved up my arse.” He shifted uncomfortably. “ ’Course, I have a couple days to think about it. They’re still attending Her Highness up there, seeing if she’s truly dead.”
Tylar sat up straighter. “Is there hope?”
“Hope is for the rich. All we have is shite and piss. And speaking of that…” Rogger climbed and crossed to the pail that served as the room’s privy.
As the day wore on and his thievish companion stretched on the floor snoring, Tylar considered his companion’s words. Could Meeryn still be alive? If so, she could clear his name, attest to his honor, what little he still had left. But in his heart he knew better. He had seen the light fade from her eyes.
Voices echoed down the dank hall of the dungeon. Guards arguing, then the stamp of boots sounded on the stone floor. Tylar climbed to his feet, hearing them approach. Rogger continued to snore in his corner.
Shadowed faces appeared at the small barred window. “Open it!” a familiar voice ordered.
The bar was slipped with a scrape of wood, and the door swung open.
A cloaked and masked figure filled the threshold.
“Perryl,” Tylar said, trying his best to stand tall when naked and covered in filth. Healed of his hunched back, Tylar now stood a fingerbreadth taller than his former squire. He kept his arms folded, not in defiance but to half-hide the black palm print, Meeryn’s mark, that rested in the center of his chest.
Perryl’s eyes narrowed at his condition and turned to the dungeonkeep at his side. “I thought I left orders for the prisoner to be treated with care.”
“Aye we have, ser knight. We’ve not beaten him once.”
Perryl pointed to Tylar, his eyes never leaving the guard. “Give him your shirt and breeches.”
“Ser!”
“Do you defy the word of a blessed knight?” A hand settled to the diamond pommel of his sword, aglow in the sooty torchlight.