Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 45

She opened her eyes and looked at the scorpion amulet on her palm. The sleeve of her tunic was pushed up her arm, she saw the scratches the thorns had made as she forced her way into this secret space. She touched her face, felt the dried blood and scratches on her cheeks, across her nose, on her brow. Scratches were not beautiful. Scratches, if they were deep enough, could leave a scar. She had seen it, on the man’s so

ns who cut and scratched themselves as they snake-danced on the edge of The Anvil.

Fiona looked at the cook’s sharp knife.

It hurt so much she nearly cursed the Labyrinth lord. The cook’s knife sliced her cleanly, it sliced her flesh like it was fresh ripe peach. She cut her cheeks, her chin, her forehead, her nose. She cut her beauty till none of it was left. Her blood flowed like a river, it washed away that beauty, it washed away the gold Leo saw in her face.

When she was cut enough, when even without a mirror to look in she knew she was ugly, she sat in painful silence until the weeping blood dried. Then she curled up in her secret space, the scorpion amulet in her fist, and went to sleep. A fever rose in her, sleep became a torment, she tossed and shivered, she dreamed the Labyrinth lord’s voice.

You are Fiona, precious and beautiful. You are the Labyrinth lord’s servant, you live for its purpose. The Labyrinth lord is in you, you are in the Labyrinth lord’s eye.

A long time passed before she woke. When once more she opened her eyes, the world was in darkness, the Labyrinth lordmoon and his wife boldly walked the sky. Her belly was hollow, her cut face puffed and swollen. It hurt when she touched it, dried blood flaking from her skin. The cuts in her face were cobbling together, lumps and ridges and soft wet wounds.

She had no idea how many highsuns she had slept through.

Her body felt trembly, she ate a piece of bread and a piece of cheese, even though eating hurt her face. She drank all the water in her leather flask, then took it with her as she fought her way out to the open hillside. Alone beneath the night sky she crept her way around the barracks wall and counted five closed narrow doors that might give her entrance. She found a water trough for the fighters’ horses along the track leading away from the barracks. She drank from it, then filled her leather flask to the top.

No-one saw her. No-one heard her. The world thought she was dead, a spirit walking, and looked straight through her to the stars.

When all her bread and cheese was eaten, and the cuts in her face were healed and dry, she crawled out of the thorny trees’ protection for the last time and walked in the newsun light to the barracks wall. Her skin was dirty, her body stank, her tunic and pantaloons were filthy, ripped and stained to stiffness with old dried blood. She looked like a she-brat who’d been running forever. She knew she was anything but beautiful .

It was exactly how she wanted to look. She thought even Leo would not know her now. Cronov would walk past her in the street, his fat face wrinkled, moaning his complaints.

The barracks’ large gates weren’t yet open, they didn’t open till two fingers past newsun. But the other doors in the barracks walls opened earlier than that, she had seen it in the days she’d sat and waited. She walked around the wall till she found the first open door and looked through it into the barracks Town.

She saw pens of goats and sheep, she saw crates of chickens, she saw slaughtered calves hanging on hooks and tubs of gizzards, overflowing. A row of tents, plain brown, not striped and pretty like Leo’s Trader tent, marched up and down, she could see nothing past them. The ground was bare in places, beaten hard and flat by many feet. Coarse grey-green grass grew in patches. The air was thick with animal smells, with blood stink, with shouted voices from beyond the row of tents. The goats and sheep bleated, the chickens cackled, from somewhere else came the lowing of cattle, the bawling of calves. Scrawny dogs quarreled and hunted for scraps to eat.

A young boy stood beside the caged chickens. His Labyrinth lordbraids were stubby and he wore no silver Labyrinth lordbells. One braid was scarlet, so he was a servant. He wore nothing but a loincloth and a chipped dog-tooth amulet round his neck. He held a cleaver in one hand and a chicken in the other, he was trying to lay the chicken on a chopping block and cut off its head. The chicken was squawking and flapping its wings, the boy was afraid of it. He struck it with a clumsy blow and cut off a finger instead of its head. The chicken cackled and ran away.

A huge man came out of a tent to see what all the shrieking was for. He saw the boy with his blood-spurting finger and smacked him hard across his ear.

“i***t fool!” the big man shouted. “Can’t even cut off a chicken’s head? What use are you when I’m shorthanded already?”

The boy was clutching his bleeding stump, he wasted a river of water down his face. Fiona stepped from outside to inside, she crossed the threshold into the barracks. She picked up the cleaver the fool servant-boy had dropped, she snatched a chicken from the nearest crate and cut off its head with a single blow.

The boy stopped crying and the big man stared. “Who are you, you ugly brat?” he demanded. “What do you do here, killing my chicken?”

She held out the chicken’s twitching corpse. “You wanted a chicken killed. I killed one for you. I am Fiona of ProNogolor.”

The big man laughed as he took the dead twitching chicken. “Are you now, brat? What happened to your face? Looks like a hunting cat wanted you for dinner.”

She had to look a long way up to his eyes. He was the biggest man she had ever seen. “My father married a woman who hated me for my beauty. My father died soon after. The woman who hated me cut off my Labyrinth lordbraids, she cut up my face, she said she would sell me and see me die a wretched servant. I ran away from that woman. I ran away to ProJenkin, Tragote’s Town of cities. I can read, and I can write, and I can kill chickens with a single blow. I will serve the Town ProJenkin. I will serve Jenkin, its glorious Warlock. I will serve you, if you will let me. If I can stay here, in these barracks.”

The big man looked down at her. Blood dripped from the chicken’s neck, puddling by his feet. “Ran away from a miserable b***h, did you?” he said. He had a meaty face, his lips were thick, his nose was flat and his teeth were crooked. He wore seven amulets in his ears. “What’s to say you won’t run away from this place, too? Shellcan he a miserable b***h and I was born and bred here, Fiona of ProNogolor.”

She met his suspicious glare unflinching. “The Labyrinth lord sees my heart. My heart is in its eye. It knows Fiona will stay, it knows Fiona will serve.” She shrugged. “Fiona has nowhere else to go.”

The big man looked at the chicken she had killed. He looked at the boy with two thumbs, seven fingers and a bleeding stump. “Get to a barracks healer, i***t, he can dip that in hot pitch.” The servant-boy ran off, still sobbing with his stupid pain. “Fiona of ProNogolor,” the big man said, looking at her again. His eyes were narrow, wondering. “Can I trust you?”

“Fiona of ProJenkin,” she told him. “I do not know ProNogolor.”

The big man’s eyes went wide, and then he laughed. “Fiona of ProJenkin. Kill me all these chickens. Pluck them and gut them and spit them for roasting. Then we will talk about you serving me and the Labyrinth lord in Tragote’s Town of cities.”

She looked around. There was the tub for chicken heads and gizzards. There was the big sack for all their plucked feathers. There was the spit, threaded already. The chickens sat in their fastened cages, shitting and clucking and waiting to die.

“My name is Tyan. Fetch me when you’re done,” said the big man, and gave her back the chicken she’d killed. As he walked away towards his tent, Fiona lifted her head and looked to the Labyrinth lordpost at the distant top of Jenkin’s Pinnacle.

You have chosen me , she told the Labyrinth lord. You have brought me to your Town ProJenkin. Now you must show me why I am brought . . . and what it is I will do for you here .

PART TWO

.. TEN

Jenkin, son of Ragilik, beleaguered Warlock of ProJenkin, closed his eyes and released a silent sigh as his high Labyrinth lordspeaker’s rage scorched his skin like the Labyrinth lord’s wrathful breath.

“Nogolor Warlock’s insult must not go on breathing, Jenkin,” Geroud thundered. “ProNogolor’s Daughter was Labyrinth lordpromised to you, not Bajadek. Why do you stand here in your palace, in the sunshine? Why do you not lead your ten thousand fighters to the gates of ProNogolor and demand the Town’s Daughter as was promised in the Labyrinth lord’s eye?”

Jenkin swallowed annoyance. Keeping his back turned and his voice calm,

because shouting would only inflame the man further, he said, “If I am the one insulted, Geroud, am I not the one who decides if the insult breathes, or must be smothered by ten thousand fighters?”

Geroud stood behind him, in the shadowed doorway to the balcony of his private palace apartments. “You think my Labyrinth lordspeaker pride is slighted.” The high Labyrinth lordspeaker’s displeasure filled the measured space between them. “You think my tongue is dipped in spite.”

Jenkin shrugged. “ProNogolor’s Daughter is still unblooded, her body cannot yet ripen with child. She has not left her father’s palace, she is not taken by Bajadek Warlock. I hear rumors, I am told certain things, but no Labyrinth lordpromised oaths are broken, Geroud. I do not know Nogolor intends to give his girl-child to Bajadek. If I treat rumor as fact and ride with my fighters to ProNogolor, to take the Daughter before she is blooded, then I am the oathbreaker. I am the one who shatters the treaty with Nogolor. Surely that is Bajadek’s desire, he desires to provoke me into unwise action. He schemes to make of me a dishonorable man. Should I give him satisfaction? I think I should not.”

Geroud stepped closer. “What you should do, Jenkin, is listen to your high Labyrinth lordspeaker. While you stand on your honor Bajadek drips poison into Nogolor’s ear. Nogolor listens, he is a weak Warlock.”

Jenkin glanced over his shoulder. “Weak or not he is a Warlock with his own high Labyrinth lordspeaker, who talks to him as you talk to me. My past is no secret, Geroud. Perhaps his high Labyrinth lordspeaker says I am not fit for ProNogolor’s Daughter.”

“Not fit?” echoed Geroud. He sounded baffled. “Warlock, are you ailing? I made the sacrifices. I read the omens. ProNogolor’s Daughter is meant for you . Here is mischief brewed by a Labyrinth lordspeaker of ProNogolor who has lost his way in the Labyrinth lord’s piercing eye. He listens to the whispers of earthbound men . . . or demons.”

Moving to the edge of his palace balcony, Jenkin looked down at the Town sprawled about the Pinnacle’s base. His sunsoaked Town, Shellthe glorious, his concubine and his curse. Master of every creature who lived here, in truth he was their servant and servant to the savage demands of his Labyrinth lord with no name. The great Jenkin Warlock: born a fruit of the Town’s vine, steeped and pulped in his vinegar history