The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 12: In Titansgrave, Part 1

 The temple didn't feel right without Ammas there. Carala had never set foot in this old ruin in her life; had in fact never been to Munazyr before this week at all, and yet she could feel the cursewright's absence the way a ceremony feels fundamentally wrong without its guest of honor -- a funeral with no corpse; a wedding with no groom. Barthim felt the same way, but he had said nothing to confirm Carala's thoughts, having spent most of the last two hours staring morosely into the brazier, occasionally feeding it with wood Ammas kept stored in his bedroom chapel. The night had grown quite chilly, but no one seemed to want to rely on each other for warmth rather than the flames.

They all sat a-circle around the fire, Vos a little apart from the rest on a footstool he had appropriated from one of the chapels. Barthim had scowled at this, not wanting them to touch any of Ammas's things, but Vos complained of a stiff back from sitting on the floor. Barthim relented grudgingly. There were still guards milling around the Prideful Lioness as well as the street out front, and it could not be clearer the bouncer was incensed that he hadn't yet been able to retrieve Casimir. Whether Laurette intended to try to press the boy back into her service the Beast didn't know, but he was determined to make the woman suffer if she tried. Whether that meant a mass resignation of his men or something a little more direct, he hadn't decided.

Only Denisius and Carala had spoken extensively, and even with pleasure, both of them marveling at each other's tales of the last six weeks. Denisius was alarmed at how thin the princess had gotten, though he supposed he ought not have been surprised, given the terrible nature of the road she'd taken by herself. More importantly, though, he was delighted to see how normal she looked. What he'd expected, he hadn't known. Perhaps some sort of wild wolf-woman, or a bloodthirsty creature whose eyes were always those of a wolf and whose teeth were fangs, maybe even a sultry temptress who would throw herself at him -- a female version of the werewolf Tacen who had so bewitched her in the first place. Instead the girl who had been overjoyed to see him was almost exactly the same one he remembered from that handful of arranged meetings for their courtship, not to mention the more numerous times they had encountered each other in the years before that. Carala did, however, look very somber, and how much of it was due to her condition and her journey, and how much was due to the terrible incident that had occurred earlier tonight, he had no idea.

"Gallowsport," she said now, hugging her knees to her chest. She had washed off the makeup as best she could -- the well in Ammas's garden wasn't well-suited for scrubbing cosmetics -- and she had wrapped herself in a blanket both for warmth and modesty. But Denisius couldn't quite get the image of her as she had appeared earlier tonight out of his head. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the bruises slowly surfacing on both sides of her face. After Poul had explained to them what had occurred in the Prideful Lioness, Vos had muttered to Denisius that in some commands he'd known, Cayle would have been lucky to escape with his fingers.

"It's not even that this Captain Thalia necessarily gives a damn about her city's whores," he'd confided to Denisius as they'd watched the guards haul one huge draped body and one small reeking basket out of the temple. "She might. I'd even say it's likely. But more important than that, she wants the city to think she does, and this idiot nearly wrecked that for her. Might as well tattoo MAKE AN EXAMPLE OF ME across his forehead."

Denisius smiled a little nervously and inched closer to Carala. The two of them were closer than Barthim or Vos were to anybody, but their distance still wasn't exactly intimate. For his own part, Denisius wasn't sure how much Carala really wanted him to touch her. He hadn't, after all, Ammas's training in how one might treat a werewolf. "What about Gallowsport?" he said. She had asked little about their excursion there, having spoken far more than she had listened. 

After receiving the news of her mother, she hadn't been much interested in tidings from the capital, though she had been relieved to hear Sarai was safe. The things that had happened while she was in wolfshape, however, she had elided completely. Denisius hadn't noticed. Vos looked troubled but said little, though he did ask several times about the dates she was abroad. Never had he asked about the phases of the moons, but Carala could sense that lurking in his questions, and was grateful he didn't press the issue further.