No Reprieve (3 page)

As he remained alone in the darkness, memories returned, vivid and unavoidable. For the first time since the awful days aboard the convict ship, he let himself think about Carensa. The anguish in her eyes when King Merrill passed sentence had been almost too much for Blaine to bear. He remembered the touch of her skin and the scent of her hair, and her last, desperate visit to him when he awaited exile in the dungeon. Despite his pleas, she had been there on the dock when the
Cutlass
sailed from Castle Reach, a silent witness.
We would have married just a few months from now
, he thought.
If I hadn't ruined everything.

To stay awake, and to blunt the pain of his injuries, Blaine counted his steps as he walked. Even so, his mind wandered. He thought about Glenreith, and realized that the only truly happy times he could remember were when Ian McFadden was gone at court, sometimes for months. Only then had Blaine and the rest of the family been certain that they would not bear the brunt of one of Ian's rages. A few golden moments were crystalized in memory. His mother Liana, before the awful night Ian's temper had taken her life. Carr, his brother, when he was young enough to escape Ian's fists, when Blaine had been able to draw off Ian's anger and protect Carr and their sister, Mari. It had been worth every bruise to see them safe. Then Blaine had grown too tall and strong for Ian to beat, and he had turned his attention to the others. Blaine had not always been able to protect them. Carr turned sullen and angry. Mari grew quiet and hid. When Blaine finally discovered why Mari tried so intently to vanish from her father's gaze, when the depths of Ian's debauchery had finally been exposed, Blaine had taken the matter into his own hands and run Ian through.

Five hundred steps. Walking keeps me warm, but eventually I'll tire. No food to replenish my energy. Sooner or later, exhaustion and cold will overwhelm even the pain. And then it will be over.

It was cold enough that the blood on his back froze to his shirt. Every movement ripped his shirt free from the ice-scabbed lacerations. Fever melted the ice, and blood trickled down his back, only to repeat the cycle again and again. For now, Blaine welcomed the pain. It proved he was still alive. When it dulled, his life dimmed with it. He focused on the pain like a beacon.

Five thousand steps.
Only a few candlemarks had passed, but Blaine was growing tired. Before the fight in the mine, and the ordeal in Prokief's headquarters, Blaine had already been exhausted from the hard labor in the ruby mines and at the edge of starvation from the prison's scant rations. That left few reserves on which to draw, now that his body began to register the full trauma inflicted on it. Uncontrollable shivering cramped bruised muscles and tensed broken skin, jerking him awake every time the tremors made him shake from head to toe.

At least I won't die of thirst,
he thought, using the buckle from his belt to scrape off some chips of ice. But even that was folly. Eating ice would lower his body temperature. Sooner or later, whether from cold, hunger, exhaustion, or thirst, he would die in the darkness. Weaponless, he lacked the means to shorten his suffering.

Twenty thousand steps.
Blaine sank to the floor, unable to push his weary body further. He wondered how Piran was doing, whether Piran was shouting curses in the darkness or trying to climb the slick walls of his oubliette, or surrendering to the finality of the situation.

One hundred thousand. One hundred thousand and one.
Blaine kept counting, though he had stopped walking candlemarks before. He was resigned to the numbness in his fingers and toes, the growing stiffness in his bruised body. He huddled in his rough cloak, trying and failing to warm his burning cheeks and ears.

If I'm still alive when they haul me out of here, what will I lose to the cold? A hand? The tip of my nose? My ears? Toes?
Just in the few months Blaine had been in Velant, he had seen his fellow convicts lose a bit of themselves to the awful cold. Frostbite was relentless. Blaine had helped hold a man down as the hedge witch cut off two gangrenous toes, frozen dead by the cold.

That's what we have to look forward to, if we survive. Dying by inches.

Blaine kept on counting, but the pace grew slower. Now and again, he lost his place and had to back up to the last number he remembered. It gave him a focus, but he was tiring. Even something as simple as counting became difficult to maintain. He counted to keep from sleeping, but it didn't help. He faded in and out of consciousness, and the dreams and nightmares finally claimed him..

Sunlight warmed his skin. The meadow down the lane from Glenreith was yellow with spring flowers. Mari ran through the blooms, shrieking with glee. She gathered a fistful of blossoms and presented them to Blaine with a wide smile. Her face and dress were grass stained but her eyes were alight. Innocent. Untouched still by the horrors to come. Blaine reached for the flowers, but Mari pulled them away and, with another gale of laughter, turned and ran across the field.

“Come back!” he shouted, starting after her. It occurred to him that he should be counting his steps. Why? He wasn't sure. It had been important. He knew that, but not the reason, and so as he ran he kept a silent count with each footfall, as the tall grass sliced at his skin, leaving traces of his blood behind on every razor-sharp blade.

“Mari!” She only laughed harder and ran faster. Surely he could catch her, but she remained far ahead of him. They were leaving the meadow and its brilliant sunlight, heading into the darkness of the forest. Blaine called for Mari to stop, but she ignored him, or perhaps she was too far away to hear his warning. The forest was dark and cold, filled with danger and predators. Wolves. Bandits. Monsters.

In the shadows of the tall trees, Blaine lost sight of Mari. He could hear her laughter but he could no longer see her. A glimpse of her white shift sent him running in one direction, and the sound of her voice made him veer off. Mari was everywhere and nowhere, and it was growing dark. He had lost count of his steps, and now he would not find his way out of the forest.

Blaine shouted Mari's name, but silence answered him. His steps pounded on dry leaves and crunched on the sticks and pinecones that littered the forest floor. Nothing mattered except finding Mari and leaving the woods. He stopped, lost. Her laughter was gone. A wolf howled. He heard her scream, this time in fear.

“Mari!” he shouted, starting to run again. Shadows gave way to darkness. So dark beneath the tall old trees. Cold, too. Snow began to fall, thick and heavy, blanketing the ground. The wolf howled again. Another scream. The forest melted away, and Blaine ran through knee-deep snow. Up ahead he saw Mari. Her shift was no longer white, but crimson, and she stood over the wolf's body, holding a bloody sword. Blaine shouted to her, terrified for her safety,
angry that she had taken on the wolf herself, but Mari only stared at him as if in a daze, then began to shake her head.

Blaine lost his footing and crashed down into the snow. The cold blackness swallowed him. Mari and the wolf were gone, and only the dark remained.

The sound of a pennywhistle pierced the darkness. Lost, Blaine followed the music. He could barely hear it at first, but gradually, the notes grew louder, closer.

“What in Raka is he muttering?” a distant voice asked. The music stopped.

“Sounds like he's counting to me,” another voice replied, just as far away as the first.

“Why in Esthrane's name is he counting?” the first voice sounded, closer now.

“Ask him if he wakes up,” the second man replied.

For a time, the voices faded into darkness. The pennywhistle took up its tune again, a jaunty tavern song that reminded Blaine of home. When the shadows parted again, Blaine heard the steady cadence of a boot tapping against rock.

“Are you back yet?” The voice was one of the speakers he had heard before, familiar, but not yet someone he could place. “Because it's bloody boring sitting vigil.”

With a struggle, Blaine opened his eyes. Even the dim light of the lantern hurt. It took him a moment to recognize the sparse surroundings of the prisoners' barracks. “Verran?”

“Thank Torven! He's stopped counting!” A chair scraped against the floor and then Verran Danning stood over him, looking down with an expression that mingled annoyance and concern.

“How long?” Blaine croaked. His throat was parched, and his body felt leaden.

“Three days in the Hole, two days since then,” Verran snapped. “With Dawe and me playing nursemaid, trying to get food down your sorry gullet and warming you up slowly enough so we didn't have to chop off all the small bits from the cold.”

Blaine had met Verran on the ship from Castle Reach. He and the minstrel-thief had struck a deal to watch each other's back on the long journey, and that had deepened into friendship when they had been assigned to the same barracks. Dawe Killick, one of the other prisoners in the same section as Blaine and Piran, had also become a good friend.

“Piran?” Blaine managed.

“He's alive,” Verran replied. “Probably refused to die just to annoy the piss out of Prokief. Not in much better shape than you, but at least he didn't mutter numbers in his sleep.”

Counting. Steps. The oubliette. Cold darkness. Little by little, memories flooded back. Pain. Dreams. Blaine shifted his weight and realized he lay on his own bunk. He winced, then realized that moving did not hurt as much as he expected.

“Got Tellam the hedge witch over here to save your sorry ass,” Verran said, slipping his pennywhistle into his pocket. “Did his best to fix Ford up as well. Tellam said he'd settle for a quarter of your next pay, if you survived, for his trouble. He closed up the stripes on your back and kept them from souring, and then he eased the ice sickness the best he could.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said.

“Dawe and I agreed. It was better to keep you and Piran alive than have to get new bunkmates,” Verran replied. “We're used to how bad the two of you snore, and how you both wake up fighting in your sleep.”

“You'd prefer counting?”

Verran barked a laugh. “No. Definitely not. Snore all you want. Just no more bloody numbers.”

Blaine went back to sleep. After a time, he woke again. Verran was gone, but Dawe dozed in a chair nearby, and startled as Blaine roused. “Good. You woke on your own. Thank Charrot and the spirits.” Dawe unfolded his thin, lanky body from the chair and bustled over to the small brazier. The fire kept the chill away and let them warm snow for water and the tea they made from dried berries and leaves.

He helped Blaine sit up and forced a cup of hot tea into his hands. “Drink this. The healer said it would help.” Blaine glanced across the small room and saw that Piran was also sitting up. They nodded to each other, in recognition of the shared triumph of survival.

“Prokief sent a guard to say you're back to the mines tomorrow,” Dawe said. He shrugged as Piran let out a halfhearted barrage of curses. “Hey, I'm just the messenger. Guess you're bloody lucky he didn't throw your carcasses to the wolves when they fished you out of the Hole.”

“What about the guard we thrashed?” Piran asked, his voice rough.

Dawe gave an unexpected chuckle. “Yeah. About that. Turns out his fellow soldiers didn't much like him, either. I hear he turned up dead, with his throat slit and his pay missing. One of the guards tried to blame it on you, but there were enough witnesses to what happened in the mine that that didn't work out so well. Blaine came out of the Hole, he went in. Not sure Prokief means to fish him out.”

Blaine sipped his tea and looked away. Tomorrow would bring new horrors. Maybe, if he survived long enough, he would earn his Ticket of Leave. It was little enough to live for, but it was something. He closed his eyes and, at the very edge of his memory, he heard a child's remembered laughter. Worth the price.

Photo Credit: Donna Jernigan

GAIL Z. MARTIN
is the author of the new epic fantasy novel
War of Shadows
(Orbit Books), which is Book Three in the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga;
Iron and Blood
(Solaris Books) the first in a new Steampunk series, The Jake Desmet Adventures, co-authored with Larry N. Martin; and
Vendetta
(Solaris Books), a Deadly Curiosities Novel, the second book in her urban fantasy series set in Charleston, South Carolina. She is also author of
Ice Forged
and
Reign of Ash
in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, the Chronicles of the Necromancer series (
The Summoner
,
The Blood King
,
Dark Haven
,
Dark Lady's Chosen
) from Solaris Books, and the Fallen Kings Cycle (
The Sworn
,
The Dread
) from Orbit Books. Gail writes two series of ebook short stories: The Jonmarc Vahanian Adventures and the Deadly Curiosities Adventures, and her work has appeared in over twenty US/UK anthologies.  

Find her at AscendantKingdoms.com, on Twitter @GailZMartin, on Facebook.com/WinterKingdoms, at DisquietingVisions.com blog and GhostInTheMachinePodcast.com, on Goodreads at goodreads.com/GailZMartin, and free excerpts on Wattpad at wattpad.com/GailZMartin.