Caelum snapped shining eyes towards the slaver as if he might reply, but he hesitated long enough to remember that he did not want to be here. He had forgotten that small but terribly important fact while being immersed in the needs and desires of Rattling Chain’s desperation.
He did not want to be here. He could not forget that again. This was the sort of place in which his name could be erased and even memory of the sun and the goddess who had dropped him back to Mizahar like a rock into a grave might fade in time. Such was the power of Nikali’s gnosis, steadily attempting to bend and break him to the shape of the world’s will.
Surgeon’s fingers tightened against the metal cored handle of his knife and he watched Haev watch him do it, his expression curious. The slaver opened his mouth as though to speak, but smooth-cheeked boy appeared in the opening to the little room bearing a torch in each hand.
“Come in,” Haev said, eyes sliding away from the healer.
Caelum felt the brush of a hand against his arm as the young woman who had been his torchbearer all along stepped closer to him.
“The key,” she murmured. “Then you can go.”
His eyes snapped down and met hers for the first time. They were whiskey colored in the torchlight, and the smile she wore beneath her promising gaze was an invitation. Nikali rolled through him, velvet and amused against his insides, even while in the young slave’s eyes Caelum caught a glimpse of her mirror mask. In the eyes of the slave he witnessed his own need to leave, to go and run far, far from here until the wind could wash him clean and all of the shuddering memories within him settled and ceased to fear.
The slave was marked by Nikali too, and he had missed it amongst turnips and autopsies, trying to improve the health of a race through the slaves of its city.
Without a word, the ethaefal turned back to the dead. He sank down to roll aside the cold, hardening organs of spleen and liver, easing across the curl of the aoteric vein for the stomach. He used his bare hands rather the tools, not wanting to accidentally perforate the delicate intestines. That would be nothing but unpleasant, and he was still holding out hold that the key would be found before he had to search them too. Sliding his fingers beneath the stomach, he lifted it above the other organs of the abdomen and only at that point lift up a scalpel. He used the blade to snip through the mesentery tissue connecting them together.
In the freshly revived light of now three torches, Caelum set the stomach organ down onto the stone bier beside the body and made swift work of a quartered dissection. The organ’s contents spilled out, measly and jumbled with dried blood that had grown grainy with the drying up of digestive chemicals. Only dimly did he recognize the scuffle and gagging noises behind him as that of someone, one of the slaves no doubt, choking on their disgust. He kept digging, flipping a deteriorating flap of tissue aside to discover the slime covered brass key the slaver so badly wanted.
Satisfaction thrummed through Caelum, washing him with an adrenaline-sick heat for having successfully achieved the completion of Haev Provedan’s most pressing desire. He gave a slight shake of his head and wiped the key off in a fold of muslin from his kit before shoving up to his feet. He thrust out his hand to Haev, key resting on his palm, and watched as the head slaver smiled for the first time in his short knowing.
“I thank you,” Haev muttered, pleasure making his rough ways almost formal. “I’ll look into this turnip business. Will you come if I decide my stock needs physicals?”
“Send word to the Sanctuary,” was the best Caelum could mutter, attempting to sidestep a promise in that regard. He wiped down his tools and tucked them back into his bag. A bucket of water appeared before him, held by the hands of the ranuri marked torchbearer, and the healer dunked his own in for a brisk wash without daring to glance again at her face.
“You want to go,” the girl told him below even a whisper, softer than a dead girl speaks, too soft for the slaver distracted by the return of his precious key to hear.
“I’ll be going now,” Caelum obediently stated. He shrugged into his jacket, hefted his bag over his shoulder, and swung around for the door. He would not think until later that he had essentially mutilated a corpse and then left strangers to see to its keeping. Terror was an ache in his throat.
“I’ll see you later, sunlord,” Haev chuckled after him, the sound as eerily flat as the rest of him.
Caelum walked out of Rattling Chains, barefoot, big eyed women and girls scattering before him. He jogged up the creaking metal steps and gulped cold air into his lungs once back in the sunlight. He did not run, despite every frantic beat of his heart; but he did not stop either, throwing up a hand in farewell to the light eyed Decath who had seen to his horse. He did not stop, but rather vaulted into the saddle, squirming the second strap of his back over the other shoulder so that it would not fall. Vega shifted, ears flattening as his long time mount picked up on his great need.
Then the horse was off, chasing the wind down the worn path past the chain-strung tree and out into the Sea of the Grass. Caelum wondered if a storm would come tonight, grumble out of his dreams to walk lightning once more over his lives. He couldn’t think, could only run, chased by the knowledge of all he had left behind.
And all he too easily could have.