This Red Sky

Chapter Fourteen

            Sonia stood in a filthy alley of Palasotarr's slums, her feet in sheepskin shoes for protection against the littering of broken glass, clay and discarded bones. She had borrowed Tessa's threadbare coat, and the hood was pulled up over her reddish hair, a paper package of stolen jewelry in the inside pocket, pressing against her ribs. A patched wool dress replaced the flashy dance costume, and she blended in with the tired and hungry residents of the crumbling tenements behind her.

Frozen, she watched the Faithful stalk down the street past her, a path clearing before them. A smaller figure followed in a swirling red cloak, half-hidden between the two cultists bringing up the rear.

Someone brushed by her, and she was jolted back to reality. The slums' stench filled her nose, and the din crashed over her like a wave. A child wailed in a doorway, and wheels clattered on the cobblestone. Sonia darted out onto the street, behind the party that walked towards the abandoned garrison.

The figure at the rear did not turn around. Sonia had watched dozens of travellers in red pass with her heart in her mouth, but the seer had not appeared in six months. But this time, Sonia knew it was her.

She took a few tentative steps after them, watching them climb the rickety makeshift stairs to Lady Sin's roof. Two prostitutes clothed in wisps of silk came giggling forward to take the arm of the cultist at the front, but he roughly shoved them off, pressing forward through the crowd.

As if in slow motion, Sonia watched them cross the roof, passing out of sight.

They found us.

Her heart pounding, Sonia ran five steps towards the stairs and then stopped abruptly. She knew that if Syralth entered the abandoned garrison there could be no hope for her friends. Tessa, Beirand, Karl...

Nakt.

The grinning face of her new "brother" crossed into her mind, and Sonia raced up the stairs as fast as she could. The Faithful must have already entered the tunnel, and she dodged three addicts and their cloud of smoke as she sprinted for the crack in the wall, scrambling through.

The sounds of fighting echoed off the walls. Sonia hurried down the narrow hall, lowering her hood.

There was a final thud, and then silence. Sonia stopped.

She crept to the end of the tunnel, where the oil lamps of the "room" formed by the rock fall created a puddle of light on the floor. She could see Karl's body lying in a pool of blood.

"Where did you get this?" Syralth was asking. Sonia jumped.

"S-stole it," Tessa gasped.

There was a pause, and two soft footsteps.

"Sonia Groth?" Syralth said, more quietly.

Sonia stepped into the light, closing her eyes for the briefest moment, and then opening them.

A cultist was holding a squirming Tessa. Karl lay dead, as did another man, his back to Sonia. Three cultists were tending to their fallen comrade. Syralth stood close to the girl, her back still to Sonia, a strange clawlike blade in one hand.

Tessa caught Sonia's gaze, and her eyes widened. The girl opened her mouth to speak, but her voice didn't seem to work. Before Sonia could announce her presence, Syralth slit Tessa's throat.

Sonia backed up quickly, her hands going to her mouth. She sprinted back up the tunnel, waiting for the shout of a cultist or the running of boots, but none came. Back out in the midday sun, she hurried down the steps, sliding past a fat man with a pipe dangling from his mouth, and plunged back into the twisting, winding alleys of the slums of old Palasotarr. The walls of the stone buildings grew cleaner as she followed a wooden ramp upwards. Here the street widened, the foot traffic turning to oxen and carts, and knights and travelers on horseback. Even as her lungs begged for air, Sonia did not stop running, up a spiral staircase that wound around a tower like a vine on a tree trunk, to another platform hanging still in the dry midday air. A blacksmith's furnace glowed in a hollow in an ancient building, and three shirtless men shoveled coal into it's maw, the heat emanating from the shop unbearable under the blazing sun. Sonia slowed to a fast walk, glancing behind her, climbing stairs and slipping down ramps, into parts of the city she had never seen before. Every armoured warrior was a Faithful thug, and every flash of red turned her world white with panic. She pressed on blindly.