The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 24: Under the Gallows, Part 4

 Ammas had wrapped a hand around Carala's forearm, tightly enough to make her wince in pain. "We have to get out of here right now," he hissed. "I'll tell Barthim. Back to my house. Now, Carala!" In his chest his heart seemed to be running a panicky footrace; his belly shriveling with icy apprehension.

Carala, shocked and not a little relieved to finally see one of her siblings again after all this time, nonetheless understood Ammas's dread, and nodded without complaint at his instruction. But whatever good fortune had saved them from danger since they had left Vilais apparently chose to abandon them at that very moment. 

Prince Silenio Deyn, clearly uninterested in whatever Denisius had to tell him -- the bored expression on his face appalled Ammas, for if nothing else Lord Marhollow had priceless information to impart -- turned his gaze directly on Carala and Ammas. Carala's disguise might have hid her face, but Silenio knew his sister at once: her build, the way she moved, the shade of her hair (not entirely concealed by her hood, unfortunately), and the hazel eyes visible above her veil. The bored expression dissolved into undiluted shock, and no small amount of joy, which was something Ammas did not care to see on that particular face.

"Cara?" he cried out delightedly. "Titans' blood, Gallis, why didn't you say you'd found her!" Lightly he cuffed Denisius on the back of the head, as if he were an ill-behaved mongrel, and Ammas found his already profound dislike of the Emperor's second son intensifying. 

Carala, seeming to know the game was up, tugged down her veil, an anxious smile on her lips. Silenio drew her into a rib-cracking embrace, apparently untroubled by the notion she carried the wolf's blood in her veins. Denisius and Vos followed closely, Denisius rubbing his head with a scowl and both of their faces the color of fresh cheese. 

The pair of soldiers marched lockstep behind, watching them with the practiced wariness that had resulted from serving with a commander who was not always entirely discreet about his own safety. Ammas shook his head warningly at Denisius, drawing back, tugging his hood more fully over his face.

Barthim, meanwhile, had abandoned the dice game, wandering over to the scene before him with the same amiable swagger he adopted when visiting Ammas's temple. Casimir jogged along at his heel, not recognizing the Prince but seeming to gather from Barthim that this might not be the happy reunion it seemed.

"Hello, Silenio," Carala gasped in her brother's embrace. He released her, grinning enormously, clutching her shoulders as he looked down at her as if he could not quite believe in her reality. "What are you doing in Gallowsport?"

"I might ask you the same thing," he laughed. "Why did you run, Cara? Father isn't going to hurt you. We'll find a cure for it, I promise you."

"You do not know what it feels like, Silenio," she said, a bitterness in her voice she hadn't expected herself.

Silenio waved this off unconcernedly. "We thought you might be in Munazyr, although I doubted it. Your betrothed's message arrived ages ago, and why he never told us he found you I should like to know. I was headed there next. There's nothing here but a Prefect who can't take off his mourning cloak. At least Gallis here kept you safe. Father will be very pleased with him."

"Only doing as I pledged to do," Denisius muttered, trying very hard not to look at Ammas.

He needn't have made the effort. Prince Silenio turned his attention almost at once to the robed figure at his sister's side, a puzzled smile on his face. "And who is this, Cara? Some new manservant you picked up on the road? You look to be a monk of the Graces, brother, if I am not -- "

Silenio's eyes widened. Ammas had hoped the twenty years that had passed since he had last spoken to Silenio would serve as an effective mask, but his hope was in vain. Their eyes met, and Sileno's sword sprang into his hand, sweeping up in an arc, the point bare inches from Ammas's unprotected throat.

"Ammas Mourthia," he sneered, seizing Ammas's hood in his free hand and roughly shoving it back. Ammas glowered at him impassively. "What in the name of the pit are you doing with my sister? Are you responsible for this? Working with these Swiftfoot scum?" 

With every word Silenio's voice rose higher and more furious, until he was nearly bellowing in Ammas's face. The soldiers who had followed Silenio, seeing his weapon unsheathed, surged past Denisius and Vos to be at his side, their own swords leaping out, raised defensively in case this sham monk should strike at the Prince. Behind Barthim, the dice players and bettors glanced up uneasily at the clamor, breaking off their game and dissolving into the crowd.

"I am not working with the Swiftfoot, I assure you," Ammas said shortly, showing no fear at Silenio's blade, though his heart was tripping rapidly. He was no warrior, and both he and the Prince knew it. There were some tools he might employ, but he was not at all sure he could lay his hands on them before the Prince cut his throat.

"Silenio, don't," Carala pleaded, clutching her brother's arm. "Ammas has been helping me -- "

Angrily Silenio shoved Carala aside. "You've been bewitched, Cara. Let's see if you still are when his guts are on the ground -- "

"Good Prince Silenio, my friend Ammas is having only a dagger to his name." Silenio whirled around to be confronted with the sight of Barthim the Beast, enormous hands planted on his hips, a friendly grin curling his mouth, brows drawn together in the wrinkled concentration that presaged a savage beating on an erring Lioness customer. "The Hethmar would never be approving of such a match."

Silenio's guards turned on Barthim now, apparently deciding a fugitive cursewright, a loyal noble, and his manservant posed no threat to their Prince, while this grinning, tattooed giant most certainly did. "I don't give a ripe shit what the Hethmar would say. Back away right now. This man is a traitor to the Malachite Throne and his life is mine."

"I think not," Barthim grinned, raising his massive fists.

 Ammas, who doubted that Silenio had only these two men at his disposal, and who really did not care to see Barthim arrested for the murder of an Imperial Prince, seized Silenio's brief distraction at once. He thrust a hand into his robes and drew out what remained of the wooden totems he and Casimir had carved in the Vilais watchtower and cast them roughly on the ground, calling out in the Therkostic tongue. Immediately both Sileno's and the soldiers' faces drew taut with abject terror, while the charms Ammas's companions still wore on their wrists shielded them completely.

The two footsoldiers shrieked and bolted, each headed in a different direction, one of them losing his helm in the process only for it to be plucked up by an enterprising street vendor who would go on to sell it to a merchant from Leusenia for an exorbitant sum of silver. Ammas never did find out exactly what they had seen in those totems on the cobbles.

Silenio drew away, shaking all over, his already pale face draining of all blood, turning him sickly white. Although in his younger years he had occasionally seen cursewright magic on the battlefield, never had he been the victim of it, and he had often gone on at great length to his subordinates about how feeble their sorcery probably was. But now he was confronted with terrible things; horrifying things.

 Ammas he now saw as a grinning, smoldering skeleton, its eyesockets lit with an awful jaundiced light, his monk's robes having become every inch the executioner's garb supposedly worn by the Hangman of the Harbor.

Carala, his sweet little sister, reared on the hind legs of a slavering wolf with blazing eyes the color of blood, not the lithe and strangely alluring creature that had so unnerved Denisius and Ammas alike, but a grotesque parody of both human and lupine shape, jaws like a hunting trap, fangs like daggers, twisted paws that might rip his head from his body. A ghastly aroma wafted from her, reeking of spoor and rotted flesh.

The swaggering giant with the Siraneshi accent seemed to have become his tattoos, a writhing mass of fierce inked monsters and living symbols, the Hethmar blades threatening to turn toward him and slice into his belly.

But it was the sight of the boy that sent him screaming back into the Swiftfoot warehouse.