4: Witches' Blood (10 page)

John led Ravishan past floundering drunks, through the city gates and up along the now nearly deserted avenues of the Harvest Fair. John tried to think a place to take shelter. He certainly wasn’t going to turn back and join Dayyid and the other priests in the shrine. The church hostel in the middle of Amura’taye, where they would have slept, was too far. And in any case, John didn’t know if he could stomach any more sanctimonious exchanges with the other men who would be staying there. Briefly, John considered taking Ravishan to the Bousim tents, but he hadn’t left there under the best circumstances. The last thing he wanted was to get into another fight with Tashtu or the rashan’im who served under him.

The surrounding tents and stalls were crowded with people taking shelter from the rain. Men bumped and pushed each other, trying to get further under the cover of eaves. Women huddled close, keeping the few children still awake protected between them.

John headed for the city proper, but once they arrived he found that he had no more idea where to go than he’d had when they’d left the shrine. Dozens of streets shot out between countless hunched buildings. He looked to Ravishan for guidance.

“You know this city better than I do. Where should we go?”

Ravishan stared at him blankly, not seeming to understand his words.

“I’m getting soaked here, Ravishan,” John prompted.

“The hostel in the Carvers’ District.” Ravishan pointed to the road to their left.

John nodded and started down the muddy street. He doubted that he needed to lead Ravishan by the hand any longer, but he didn’t want to let go of him, either.

The hostel was a small wooden building with a reed-thatched roof and an outdoor toilet. Because it was the Harvest Fair, few rooms were available. The man at the door seemed relieved when John told him that he and Ravishan could share a room. John gave the man three wooden coins and a polished blessing stone. While the man didn’t look too pleased with the payment, he didn’t argue about it either. He accepted John’s quick blessing and handed him a cheap cut-tin key.

The room was hardly more than a closet with several blankets and a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor. It was dark with a pungent scent reminiscent of a stable. There were no lamps or even candles. After John closed the door, he had to wait for his eyesight to adjust.

Once inside, Ravishan just leaned against the door, wet and miserable and seemingly unaware of how violently his own body shivered.

“You should get out of those clothes,” John said. He winced at the words as he said them. It sounded like some kind of cheap come-on. John supposed that if Ravishan hadn’t looked so pathetic and if the evening hadn’t been so utterly ugly, it might have been.

As it was, John simply turned his back and quickly stripped off his own soaking clothes. He took one of the blankets and wrapped it around himself.

When he turned back to hand the other blanket to Ravishan, he found that Ravishan still wore his wet cassock. Some color had come back into his face and a blush was spreading across his cheeks. His expression was a weird mix of arousal and misery.

John sighed. “I don’t think your clothes are going to drip dry anytime soon, do you?”

Ravishan flushed and then began pulling at his heavy cassock. His hands were still numb and clumsy from the cold. The sodden fabric slipped out of his grip. John stepped closer and took hold of the dripping wool, saying, “Here, raise your arms.”

Ravishan quickly lifted his arms over his head. John pulled the cassock up and off him. He tossed it into the pile with his own clothes. He’d worry about getting them dry later. For now, he concentrated on Ravishan.

 
The thin white material of the undershirt and pants was plastered to Ravishan’s body. The wet fabric did nothing to hide the deeply tanned expanses of Ravishan’s lean chest and muscular legs. Even in the dimness of the room, John could see the dark hair of Ravishan’s chest and the way it tapered into a fine line leading down to his groin.

An instinctive flush of desire surged through John. His skin felt suddenly much hotter. John forced his thoughts past it. The night had already been too desperate and repugnant. Ravishan was a stunned, shivering mess. The last thing he needed was a seduction. John doubted he was up to it himself.

He quickly untied the knotted laces of Ravishan’s pants. Then he straightened and stepped back. Ravishan could handle the rest for himself. Once Ravishan had undressed, John handed him a blanket, which he wrapped around himself. His black hair was beginning to dry and curl just slightly.

He looked like he could have been some young, biblical prophet draped in shadows and flowing cloth.

“Are you tired?” John asked.

“I don’t know. I think I am but I don’t feel—” Ravishan cut himself off. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

“I don’t either,” John said. His own mind was in too much turmoil to sleep. Still, his body ached with exhaustion and hunger. There was nothing to eat, but at least he could get off his feet. John sat down on the mattress. Ravishan joined him. Despite the dousing of rain, the smell of smoke and roasting meat still clung to both of them.

John didn’t want to think about it. And yet each time he tried to think of something to say, his mind was overwhelmed with the image of that girl, struggling, shrieking as she burned. He didn’t know if merely witnessing an atrocity could harm a man, but it seemed that way.

Somewhere in him there had been a self-image of a man who was brave enough to suffer for his convictions. A man who would not stand by as a girl was murdered in front of him. Now revulsion and recrimination were eating that ideal away.

He glanced to Ravishan. He knew it was a double standard of the deepest affection that kept him from applying the same expectation to Ravishan. He wouldn’t have wanted Ravishan to fight to save the girl. He wouldn’t have wanted Ravishan to die for her.

“I can’t think of anything to say,” Ravishan whispered. “I can’t stop seeing the fire.”

“You did what you had to.”

“I know,” Ravishan replied far more easily than John expected. “She murdered her husband’s first wife. She misused the power that Parfir had entrusted to her. But...”

John frowned. The revelation that the girl was a murderer herself shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t justify her brutal treatment. But it seemed to make it easier for Ravishan to accept.

“I don’t know why, but this entire day I’ve felt like I was eight again. I felt like I did when my mother burned, like a stupid little child who couldn’t do anything.” Ravishan’s voice choked. He lowered his head so that his loose hair hid his face. “I haven’t thought about her or my father in years. I don’t know why now...” Ravishan wiped the back of his hand across his face. He kept his head lowered. “I think I always knew they were criminals, but they weren’t bad. They never hurt anyone. There was even a big, golden dog. Nobody tried to kill her or cook her. They were people who never hurt anyone...god, I’m babbling like a baby.”

Again Ravishan wiped his face. He drew in a deep breath. “How am I going to be Kahlil when I can’t even burn a witch?”

“You did burn her.” The words came out with a flatness that John wasn’t used to hearing in his own voice. Ravishan didn’t seem to notice it.

“But I didn’t want to,” Ravishan said quietly as if it were the worst confession. “It made me feel sick, like they were making me burn my mother again.”

“They made you burn your own mother?” It seemed too horrible to be true. Even as he asked, John knew it had to be. It would have been the only act that could have proven Ravishan’s loyalty to the Payshmura. It would have been the only way he could have saved himself and his sister.

“She was a traitor, a holy sister who turned to witchcraft. She aided the Fai’daum. The punishment had to be burning.”

“And your father?”

“They shot him. I didn’t see it, but Rousma did. She still has nightmares about it.”

“I’m sorry,” John said. He wished he could say something else, something that would make it all less terrible.

“It could have been worse.” Ravishan shrugged and leaned back against the wall. It was an act of boyish bravado, an attempt to regain his composure. John could see that Ravishan’s face was streaked with tears but he didn’t say anything. Anyone else sitting in the darkness with him wouldn’t have known.

“They were going to shoot me as well.” Ravishan gazed up at the ceiling. “They had me on the ground with a gun right up to my head. But I moved.”

“Through the Gray Space?” John asked.

Ravishan nodded. “Then Dayyid wanted to keep me alive to train me.”

John leaned back beside Ravishan. “You’ve had a crappy life.”

Ravishan looked startled for a moment and then laughed.

“Yeah, I have.” He leaned his head against John’s shoulder. John slid his arm around Ravishan and held him. “But it doesn’t seem so bad right now.” Ravishan closed his eyes.

John held him until he fell asleep.

John awoke early. Thin predawn light seeped in through cracks between the planks of the walls. Ravishan’s warm skin pressed against his own. Their legs and arms had curled around each other as they slept. John pressed his lips lightly against Ravishan’s.

Slowly, Ravishan responded. He opened his eyes and smiled, still half-asleep. Lazily, he brushed a hand across John’s chest. John leaned in to kiss Ravishan a second time, but then John’s stomach let out a growl of hunger. John felt a small flush of embarrassment spread over his cheeks. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”

“And I smelled too delicious?”

“You are delicious,” John replied.

“Am I?”

“Yes.” He kissed Ravishan again, much more deeply this time. Ravishan leaned into him. John slid his hand over the edge of blanket that lay across Ravishan’s waist. His fingers curled around it and he forced himself to uncurl them. Anyone could be outside that door. Listening. Maybe it was just paranoia, but he had a strange sense of being watched.

John drew back from Ravishan and forced himself to sit up. “We have to get to the church hostel before Dayyid notices that we’re missing.”

Ravishan groaned but sat up as well. “What will we tell him if he’s already noticed?”

“The truth, I suppose,” John said. “We picked the closest hostel we could find and got out of the rain.”

John picked up his pants. They were cold and still damp from the night before. His undershirt and cassock lay crumpled together on top of his sodden wool socks and filthy boots. Ravishan’s wet clothes were flopped beside his own in a second, unappealing mound. Not for the first time, John wished he had access to a washing machine and dryer.

He sighed and pulled the pants on. A clammy chill slid up his legs.

“Dayyid probably spent all last night sharpening his razors for what little hair I’ve managed to grow out,” Ravishan muttered.

“Who knows? He wasn’t paying much attention to you when we left.”

“He hates to get wet.” Ravishan scowled at his soaking clothes. “Right now I’m not relishing the idea myself.”

“I’d tell you that it’s not so bad, but I’d be lying,” John replied.

Ravishan took his own clothes and dressed quickly. John did the same. It did no good to draw out the unpleasant sensation of the damp cloth folding over dry warm skin. And after a few minutes, John found that the heat of his body had at least warmed the wet clothes.

They left the hostel without even a nod from the man who had rented the room. Now the man lounged in a chair beside the door, sleeping. John imagined he’d been up most of the night allowing drenched strangers in. John left the room key in his lap.

 
Outside, the sky was still dull and the streets were muddy. Little white seabirds clustered together under eaves of many of the buildings. No one else seemed to be up yet.

“If we cut through the Smiths’ Rows—” Ravishan began then stopped and scowled at the countless rows of stone buildings before them.

“We cut through and…” John prompted.

“We’ll run straight into one of the inner city walls.” Ravishan shook his head. “I’m not used to traveling with someone who can’t cross the Gray Space.”

“Would it be better if you arrived alone?”

“No. If I was out with an ushvun, Dayyid might suspect I was up to some mischief, but if he thought I was alone, then he’d be sure,” Ravishan said. “We’ll just have to take the main road.”

“He doesn’t trust you much, does he?” John asked as they walked.

“Dayyid? Not even as far as he can throw me. But I’m his best chance for a Kahlil so he can’t afford to be rid of me.” Ravishan glanced up at John and smiled. “Your braid is a mess.”

“You’re on the scruffy side yourself.”

 
They walked up the slow incline of the main road. As they traveled, the gold edge of the sun began to rise. People awoke and began the first activities of the morning. The scents of cook fires drifted through the air. Wisps of smoke curled up from chimneys. The strong aromas of cooking meat floated out from the buildings.

It was normally a smell that John would have welcomed—the promise of a warm meal wafting on the cold air. But this morning the fresh memory of the girl burning on the pyre choked his appetite.