Blood Song

Vaelin followed the boy through the mass of people, sometimes losing him amidst the crush only to find him a few steps on, standing impatiently and muttering for him to keep up.

“Don’t they teach ya how to follow folk then?” he asked as they struggled through a particularly thick knot of spectators at a dancing bear show.

“They teach us how to fight,” Vaelin replied. “I’m… unused to so many people. I haven’t been to the city for four years.”

“Lucky bastard. I’d give me right nut to never see this dump again.”

“You’ve never been anywhere else?”

Frentis gave him a look that told him he was very stupid. “Oh yeah, got me own river barge I ‘av. Go anywhere I please.”

It seemed to take an age of struggling through the crowd before Frentis halted, pointing at a wooden frame rising above the throng about a hundred yards away. “There y’go. That’s where they’ll stretch the poor sod’s neck. What they killin’ ‘im for anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Vaelin replied honestly. He handed the boy the two knives he had promised. “Come to the Order House on Eltrian evening and I’ll teach you how to use them. Wait by the north gate, I’ll find you.”

Frentis nodded, the knives quickly disappearing into his rags. “You gonna watch it then? The hanging.”

Vaelin moved away from him, eyes scanning the crowd. “I hope not.”

He searched for a good quarter hour, checking every face, watching for any sign of Nortah, finding nothing. He shouldn’t have been surprised; they all knew ways of avoiding searching eyes, subtle ways of making oneself unrecognisable and just another body in the crowd. He paused by a puppet show, feeling a mounting knot of panic building in his gut. Where is he?

“Oh, blessed souls of the Departed,” the puppeteer was saying in a mock tragic tone, his expert hands working the strings, moulding the wooden doll on the stage into a pose of despair. “Ever have I been Faithless, but even a wretch such as I deserves not this fate.”

Kerlis the Faithless. Vaelin knew the story, it was one of his mother’s favourites. Kerlis denied the Faith and was cursed to live forever until the Departed consented to allow him entry to the Beyond. It was said he still wandered the land, seeking his Faith but never finding it.

“You have made your fate, Faithless one,” intoned the puppeteer, bobbing the collection of wooden heads that represented the Departed. “We do not judge you. You judge yourself. Find your Faith and we will welcome you…”

Vaelin, momentarily distracted by the puppeteer’s skill and the craftsmanship evident in the dolls, forced himself to turn back to the crowd. Look, he told himself, Concentrate. He’s here. He has to be.

His survey stopped when a face in the audience caught his attention, a man in his thirties with lean, strong features and a sad gaze. A familiar gaze. Erlin! Vaelin stared in astonishment. He came back here. Is he mad?

Erlin seemed completely rapt by the puppet show, his sad gaze utterly absorbed. Vaelin puzzled over what to do. Speak to him? Ignore him?… Kill him? Dark thoughts flickered through his head, driven by panic. I helped him and the girl. If they catch him… It was the image of the girl’s face and the feel of her scarf around his neck that forced sanity back into his thoughts. Walk away, he decided. Safer if you never saw him…

Erlin looked up then, his eyes meeting his, widening into alarmed recognition. He glanced once back at the puppet show, his expression an unreadable confusion of emotion, then turned and disappeared into the crowd. Vaelin was seized by a compulsion to follow him, find out if Sella was well but as he started forward a shout erupted behind him followed by the sound of clashing blades. It was fifty yards away, near the gallows.

A crowd was knotted around the scene of the disturbance and he had to force his way through, drawing grunts of pain and insults as his desperation made him less than gentle.

“What was he doing?” someone in the crowd was saying.

“Trying to get through the cordon,” another voice said. “Oddest thing. Not what you expect from a brother.”

“Think they’ll hang him too?”