[story] raven lies
author: risen (worldatomic)
email: warfair [at] hotmail.com
Ravenli remembers:
The first time he dies, he is six, and being dedicated to Calam.
It is dark, the sky is bruised, sprinkled with stars like spilled sugar, and the horizon is a splash of crimson where the sun is just beginning to rise.
He is a small boy, slight and pale, with hair the color of milk cream and eyes like old blood. In his left hand he holds a bone dagger, ghostly white in the dark; in his right, a silver needle, thin and glistening like ice. He is naked, a precaution taken so that he can hide no other weapons.
A priest steps forward and wraps black cloth around his eyes, and Ravenli breathes deeply. He smells sweat and rain and linen and sweet peach blossoms and lilies. White ones, he thinks, for purity; it almost makes him smile. A cool breeze raises gooseflesh across his skin, and the damp grass is slick against his bare ankles. Sheep bleat in the distance, and he can hear the whisper of fabric as those around him shift.
He stands motionless, listening to the shimmer of cicadas, and rushes to duck under a blade as it screams over his head. He spins, feels the bite of steel against his ribs and the hot rush of blood. Jabs with the needle, feels it catch in cloth--
Cold steel stabs through his spine and into his heart.
The crack as the sword breaks his sternum is a sound more felt than heard. His legs turn limp - he cannot feel them - and he thinks it ironic that the sword which killed him is all that keeps him upright. He tries to call out, to say something, but all that emerges is a gurgle because his lungs, his mouth, are filled with blood. His heart stops.
Ravenli feels himself die, and it is glorious.
When he wakes, there is a subtle but powerful ache in his chest, and it leaves him gasping.
They tell him he has given himself to his god, that Calam is pleased with his sacrifice. They say Calam has given a little of himself unto Ravenli as reward.
Later, a small boy, smaller even than he is, says that, when they had brought Ravenli back to the village, he wore a skeleton grin.
He asks, What?
And the boy says, Your eyes, sir. They were empty, like a skull's.
Ravenli stares, and the boy turns red and ducks his head. From the doorway, Eldest says, Calam is pleased, Ravenli. Tomorrow, you will join the ranks of his Chosen ones.
He smiles.
When he can, Ravenli looks at his chest, and he can almost feel his heart fail again when he sees the scar, glistening and pink against his skin.
Ravenli remembers the words now, though he has forgotten the voices - even his own.
Still.
By the time Ravenli is fifteen, he has died more times than he can count. It is a heady thing, feeling his heart stop even as his body begins to heal itself - the speed at which his cells reform, his bodily functions return, grows.
He is disappointed, though. He has died so many times, but he's never been truly destroyed. It is a longing that aches in his bones, as real and physical as the ghost pains of his first death.
He is nineteen the first time he truly kills someone.
Ravenli has forgotten the boy's name, as he has forgotten the sound of his own voice, but he does remember that he had a shock of red hair, morbidly vivid against his pale skin, and eyes like the summer sky after a storm.
They are experimenting, he and this boy, a kind of game to see how much pain they can tolerate. They have long passed mere injury - Ravenli has had his skull caved in, and there is still blood and bone and brain matter tangled in his hair.
He remembers, after the world came back into focus and he felt himself breathe again, yelling about how much that hurt. The boy is laughing at him, taunting him, and Ravenli sneers and punches through his chest. The boy's ribs break with a sharp, wet snap, and bone and blood burst through his skin as one. Sunlight glitters knife-bright across the boy's smile, frozen and bleeding. Ravenli wraps a fist around his heart and rips it from his chest.
Hot, hot blood pulses into his hand and down his arm. The smell is thick in his nostrils, heavy on his tongue, and over the roaring in his ears he can hear the boy's screams. For a long moment Ravenli watches him writhe, noting the way he twitches.
Eventually, the screams die into pathetic little gurgles, so Ravenli figures the pain has faded. They're still playing the game, though, so he searches for something else to try. His attention is caught by the pyre roaring on the hillside, and he grins as he looks at the heart that falters in his palm. He whispers the key to a fire spell.
The heart erupts into flame, unfolding like a flower at dawn, and the boy's screams begin anew as the fire engulfs Ravenli's hand. He can feel his flesh bubble and pop and split, but there is a desperate note in the boy's screams that makes him stare.
A dull, wet thud snaps his attention from the boy to his hand, where the fire has collapsed in upon itself and only a pile of ashes remains.
He looks at the boy, sees that the wound in his chest has stopped leaking blood. A strange feeling is rising within him, and he sits there for hours, waiting.
His hand is entirely healed by the time he realizes that the boy is not going to get up. The sky is seared by a burning sunset, and the light turns the hole in the boy's chest into a corpse's mouth, all crooked teeth and rotting lips and swollen tongue.
The strange feeling swells and bursts.
Ravenli laughs.
Three days later he stands before the village pyre, listening to its rumbling howl. He closes his eyes against its brilliance, and thinks of the town sleeping below; the streets are lit only by lamplight and the moon, shining swollen and pale against the midnight sky.
For a long time, he thinks.
The fire's glow catches on his hair, glimmering like smoldering embers, or molten gold. He turns and walks down the hill, through the streets, and pauses at the village garden; the moonlight has washed the colors out to shades of gray, but the flowers glitter like jewels against the soil and the two giant peach trees stand solid and firm in their midst.
He continues on, through the village gates, and turns. He watches the pyre, the way it flares and spits glowing sparks, and thinks of the scripture, how Calam was born from the fire burning upon that hill eons ago, when the world was still young and humans a new race. He thinks of how Calam brought with him a reign of blood and destruction and fire, conquering the world and ruling with a cruel hand until one of his own underlings betrayed him, cutting his heart out in his sleep and tossing it into the flames from which he'd come.
Ravenli is tired of this village. It has given him all it can, and its ways are old and tired. They stifle him, cage him in with tradition-gilded bars.
He calls the fires down upon the village, stands for a long moment and lets them engulf him. His skin boils, cracks and burns, sizzles and pops.
He turns and walks away, leaving the village a roaring inferno behind him.
He has never gone back. Now, he likes to imagine that all that remains of the village are the shattered shells of stone buildings, green with moss and ivy. There will be poppies, he thinks, glowing in the harsh sunlight as they sway in the breeze. They will look like splatters of blood against the decaying stone.
And so the seasons pass, but he cannot tell you how many he has seen. He does not even know how old he is.
It takes him years to find something to do with himself. Eventually he falls into the mercenary life, and he is good at it, better than most of the people he works with. He refuses to join a company - too many dues and restrictions - but even as an independent mercenary he has built himself an impressive reputation. His fighting style is old, unorthodox, and generally unrecognizable, but there is no doubt of its power.
His latest assignment is in the highlands of Veralta, where the ocean breaks and foams against black cliffs and the air is bitter with salt and brine. The village is old and wet; the shacks sag against each other as wind whips through the cracks in board and roof, and the roads are dark and narrow and twist around themselves like some ancient sea serpent.
Ravenli looks outside, where iron-bellied clouds drip fat, cold gobs of rain like slime. He glances behind him, into the dark of his room, and then again outside; the world is gray and the edges made soft by rain. He leaves his cloak and shirt crumpled on the bed and steps barefoot into the street, letting the rain slide like eels over his skin.
The castle towers over the village, high on the hillside. It is worn and decaying, the cliffside wall crumbling over the edge, and a freezing fog hangs like a shroud over the turrets and bleeds ice crystals like knives down the castle walls.
Even in this cold, he loves the rain. It tastes sweet and clean on his tongue, and cools the burning behind eyes that ache from the sea wind. He thinks he used to play in the rain before he was dedicated, remembers fragments and flashes of splashing in mud puddles and, maybe, his mother. But he lost the ability to tell real memories from the ones he created long ago.
Someone is watching him.
He spins, needle-blade jumping to his palm.
But when he looks, he finds no one.
His employer is balding and fat, his robes bursting at the seams and his forehead glistening with sweat. He has a servant whose entire purpose is to wipe the sweat off his brow. He eyes Ravenli's chest, bare beneath the half-open cloak, and grins like a lecherous pig. He says, You're pretty enough to be my little wife.
Ravenli sneers, says something about how he'd love that, wouldn't he, the fat cow? And then he grins, wide and insolent.
The man turns an ugly red against the purple of his robe, sprays out some verbal abuse and a lot of saliva, and then demands an explanation of why the job hasn't been finished.
Smirking, Ravenli apologizes, but his dress hasn't been tailored to fit yet. Broad shoulders, you know. And, in case he'd forgotten, the ball was being held tonight, so he hadn't really had the chance, now, had he?
His employer's thin lips quiver, and the vein Ravenli can barely see in his trembling jowls throbs. Ravenli smiles, and leaves.
Unfortunately, though, he wasn't lying; this assignment requires he disguise himself as a woman, and he may be slight but years of wielding his scythe have thickened his shoulders.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The sun burns white through soft clouds of gray pearl and smoky blue, glittering bright and sharp across ice and glass. He stops at the tailor to purchase his gown, a frilly confection of gray silk and white furs, and ignores the looks the tailor gives him.
When he arrives, decked in his dress and a jester's mask of scarlet feathers that sparkle with jewels, the ball is in full flow. People swarm and dance in a sea of ever shifting colors, and in the far corner a group of musicians play a lively waltz, only just audible over the crowd. The ballroom is done in shades of polished gold and rich creams, with shimmering gold curtains drawn to each side of the broad windows, and all the hired staff wear uniforms of cream and gold trim.
There is no mistaking Ravenli for a woman, but it is deliberate; his target is whispered to lust after pretty men in women's clothing, and Ravenli knew this when taking the assignment. He takes his time, though, dancing with whoever is willing, and when he finds his target the gilded clock above the massive fireplace reads two hours before midnight. He exchanges pleasantries, curtsies and giggles and blushes like a little girl though his skin is crawling, and fakes shy acceptance when he is asked outside.
On the balcony, obscured by thick golden curtains, the air is cool and dry. The moon is soft and silver behind dark, heavy clouds that scuttle across the night, and Ravenli sees no stars. He watches from beneath his eyelashes, assuming coyness, as his target stretches out a hand and caresses his cheek, telling Ravenli that he is beautiful. Ravenli wants to bite him, can almost feel his teeth sink into flesh and taste the blood burst across his tongue.
He does not.
Instead, he palms the bone dagger he has hidden in his sleeve and slashes it across the man's jugular. Blood gushes forth, splattering hot against his face, and he buries the blade in the man's belly, ripping upward until it snags against his ribs.
He whispers, Calam thanks you for this, and he laughs at the terror and horror in eyes that grow glassy with death.
The man dies with nothing more than a pathetic little gurgle.
Whispering prayers, Ravenli paints symbols on the walls and floor and his own skin with the cooling blood. It is thick and sticky on his face, his arms, his chest, and he shivers.
When he's done, he slides the dagger back up his sleeve and vaults over the balcony railing, hits the cobblestone with a force that breaks his legs like dry branches, and waits until they heal just enough to walk before setting off down the street. He keeps to the shadows, because even simple villagers such as these will notice someone covered in blood, and as he leaves the walls surrounding the castle the cobblestone melts into packed dirt. The frills and lace of his skirt trail in the mud, and the inside layers cling cold to his legs. A cool breeze brings gooseflesh to his skin and dries the blood so that it itches and flakes.
He enters his room through the window, which he'd left unlocked, and he pauses to glance at his reflection in the bedside mirror. Dried blood cements chunks of his hair, turned the color of rust, to his face and neck. Ravenli grins, and remembers:
You had a skeleton's grin, sir.
He laughs, and sinks his bone dagger into his belly. He laughs as the blood boils forth, laughs as it saturates his gown, laughs as it soaks down and down--
Pale hands, gray like ash or the skin of a corpse, catch at the edges of the open wound and pull.
Ravenli feels it like he has felt nothing since his first death. He feels his skin stretch, feels it tear, and pain explodes through his senses, red and hot. Like fire. Like blood. Corpse-like fingers slippery with blood claw at the muscle, ripping him open, and Ravenli collapses as his guts spill out and onto the floor with a heavy, wet smack.
Through eyes hazy and unfocused with pain, Ravenli thinks he is staring into the face of his god. He breathes, "Calam," and feels agony and ecstasy roar through him like a hymn as fingers made warm by his insides bury themselves deep in his abdomen.
His eyes roll back in his head as the world turns white.
When he wakes, his heart is aching beneath the scar and there is a man sitting at the foot of his bed.
Ravenli's first impression is of red hair so vivid it burns. It is a shock against the room's dimness and the man's gray skin. His eyes are a poisonous, glowing green, with no pupil and black sclera. He looks like a corpse-puppet, held together only by the thick black thread Ravenli can see woven through the skin of the joints not hidden by clothing. The seam of his lips stretches almost to his ears, and there is a row of threads binding each side.
He grins like someone has cracked open a rotten melon, and says, "My name is Althemi, but if you like feel free to call me the name of your god."
Ravenli stares.
Althemi's voice is low and rough, and it is the most glorious thing he has ever heard.
Finally, he says, "You ripped me open."
Althemi shrugs and smiles, and it makes Ravenli shudder. "You liked it," he says. Ravenli can't read the expression on his face.
He's opened his mouth to respond when he realizes that not only had he heard Althemi's voice, instead of just the words, he'd heard his own. Ravenli goes still, and for a long moment the world seems to hesitate. He feels something shiver across his skin, and his heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and then he starts speaking. The words boil out of his mouth like vomit, roll off his tongue like crashing waves, and he knows not what he is saying but for the first time he can remember it's not the voice he doesn't hear but the words. His voice - his voice - is low and resonant and the tiniest bit raspy, and he thinks it is talking about the sky, gray with clouds like satin worn and old enough that it has lost its sheen.
Althemi's fingers are around his throat before he can comprehend he's even moved, nails biting into his skin, and he says, "If you don't shut up I'm going to rip out your vocal cords."
Ravenli falls silent.
After a moment, Althemi pulls his hand away, and Ravenli catches a glimpse of his fingers.
They are gray, the skin almost translucent, and his nails are glossy like polished glass. His nail beds, though, are a deep, blackish purple.
Like belladonna.
He stares, transfixed and chewing at his lip, and he has to remind himself to breathe.
He leaves with Althemi in the morning, who is on his way to a contract target in Hamunandi, because being with him is a little like dying. They stop just long enough for Ravenli to get his payment, and they leave with blood and fat splattered across the windows and stuck to their skin. Ravenli grimaces and brushes at his cheek with the back of his hand, and only smears the blood further. There is a bubble of fat tangled in his hair, and as he pulls it out and tosses it away he says, "This is fucking gross."
His voice shivers along his spine, and he smiles.
Althemi doesn't look at him. "You make a horrible woman," he says. "Don't act like one."
Ravenli growls and says, "Fuck you."
Their travels lead them to the basins and plateaus of the Salween Desert to the north of Hamunandi, where there is not so much sand as bare, wind-scoured rock, and the sky is blue and clear.
It takes them two weeks to cross the desert. Ravenli talks altogether too much, and Althemi's temper simmers until it boils over and he snaps Ravenli's neck, or makes good on his threat to rip out his vocal cords. Ravenli will swear and curse him if he can still speak, but the truth is that he hasn't died so often since he lived in the village, and it's soothing an ache he hadn't realized was there.
Atop the last plateau, Ravenli pauses.
Before them the plateau joins the valley in a roll of brown cliffs, melting into low round hills and then a broad, grassy plain. The sun is just beginning to set, washing the world in shades of deep purple and gold, and the plateau's shadow is long and dark. Ravenli, though, can still make out the orchard, leaves frosted with gold. In the distance, smoke rises from a chimney in curls of silver, and a cool breeze brings with it the sweet aroma of peaches.
He breathes deeply, feeling something warm rush through him, and lets his eyes fall shut. His thumb runs across the scar on his chest.
When he opens his eyes again, Althemi has already started off down the cliff.
"Have you ever had peaches?" he asks the next morning.
They are walking through the orchard, between carefully cultivated rows of trees, and the scent is wreathed about him.
Althemi looks at him, and when Ravenli sighs he tastes peaches.
So he's surprised when Althemi says, "Once. Long ago."
Ravenli glances at him, eyebrows lifted, and something about the way a shimmer of sunlight lands on Althemi's face turns his blood cold. He remembers burning red hair and screams and so much blood as the heart he holds in his hands catches fire, and he asks, voice shaking, "Have we--"
The words catch in his throat, and he can't even make himself ask, Have we met before?
"What?"
He swallows and shakes his head. "Never mind," he says. "It's nothing."
Venom-green eyes narrow - Althemi obviously doesn't believe him - but Ravenli's attention has been caught by a flash of color behind him. He moves around Althemi, lifting a low-hanging branch, and finds a single, delicate pale pink flower. He smiles, cupping the blossom in his palm, and whispers, "I am your captive."
"What?" Althemi repeats, and he sounds angry.
Ravenli plucks the flower and turns around. It looks so small in his hands, but even smaller tucked into the corner of the half-mask Althemi wears to hide his stitches. He runs his hands over Althemi's shoulders, down his arms - so broad, so much larger than he is; he hadn't really noticed before - and feels the muscles tense beneath his fingers. The blossom is frail and almost white against the black of Althemi's cloak, but its dozens of thin, deep pink stamen float proudly in the faint breeze.
He says, "Keep it," and can't look away.
Althemi is silent for a long moment before he says, "I told you to stop acting like a woman." But he doesn't move to throw it away.
"Fuck you, Althemi."
As they leave the orchard, Ravenli snags a peach and leaves a small fortune in gold discs in return. He sighs in bliss as he takes the first bite: Soft, soft white flesh that almost melts before his teeth, and a rich sweetness that bursts across his tongue. Its juice glistens sticky on his lips.
They travel for months through Hamunandi.
Through forests of enormous bamboo trees, where Ravenli raves and points until Althemi punches a bamboo branch through his skull. He gives Althemi a bamboo flower, a thin, long, spiky thing of deep reddish purple, and they see one of the legendary bamboo bears.
Across low, forested mountains, thick with the scent of pine. Althemi pushes him down a slope of loose gray rock, where he startles a browsing moon bear. He watches as it mauls him, and makes no move to help. It takes a week for his shattered bones and mangled flesh to heal, and Ravenli shoves a cluster of white rhododendrons in his face and growls, "You're a fucking asshole."
The lowlands of southern Hamunandi are flat and open, cracked gray earth and brittle vegetation whose color seems to have been sucked out by the heat. Slicing through the steppe is the Yellow River, glittering like burnished steel in the blistering sunlight, and it is this they follow into the great city of Bayankali. The roads are old and worn into deep ruts by carriage wheels and the colors are no brighter than the steppe, but the atmosphere is warm and hangs over the city like heat haze.
They eat a dinner of rice and peach-glazed fish, and Ravenli buys oranges and yellow plums and dumplings filled with sweet bean paste from vendors on the street. Nightfall brings with it brightly colored paper lanterns and the summer festival. Althemi waits just long enough for the fireworks to end to remind Ravenli, who is laughing like a child, of the reason they are here.
Ravenli glowers and says, "Thanks for ruining the mood, asshole," but he follows readily enough.
It's almost too easy to slip the poison into the noble's tea, and they watch from a side vendor (Ravenli orders steamed noodles over fried egg) as the man turns purple and starts clawing at his throat. Porcelain shatters as his wife rushes to help, and there is a wet crack and splatter of blood as the man's spasms throw him to the ground. His mouth is speckled with foam, his eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites are visible, and his tongue is black and swollen when it lolls from his gaping mouth.
The wife screams, and Ravenli sneers. "Fucking annoying," he mutters. "And poison's fucking gross, you know that?"
Althemi says, "Shut up."
Ravenli swears and throws a chopstick at him.
They leave before dawn, following the Yellow River until it meets the coastline, watching as it slowly turns the muddy yellow that gives it its name. Along the way, Ravenli spots a splash of pink, and he laughs as he picks a cluster of oleander. Althemi takes it without a word.
Ravenli yawns as Althemi charters a ship, and spends most of the journey sleeping below deck.
Roughly a year later, their travels bring them briefly to the Elladan city-state of Karolos, with its bright, rocky coasts and warm, dry summers. Ravenli eats an orange in the shade of a small building while Althemi speaks inside with the owner of the house (one of his "contacts," he says), and he stands when Althemi leaves. His fingers are sticky with juice, and the smell is sharp and tangy in his nostrils.
Althemi says, "We'll stay the night, and leave for Omari in the morning."
Ravenli blinks. "We're going to Kemet?"
He gets no response, but he follows Althemi to, he assumes, the tavern in which they'll be staying.
It's directly off of the central marketplace, and he stays outside while Althemi haggles over prices with the innkeeper. Ravenli finds himself staring at what the natives call the Acropolis: High on a rocky brown hill, it is broad and flat, and upon it stand several buildings, all brightly painted and in the strangely elegant architecture so commonly found in Ellada. What really draws his eye, though, is the enormous temple on the crown of the hill, what looks from his vantage point like a slab of granite held up by nothing more than tall, sweeping columns topped with smooth capitals that flare outwards to meet the ceiling. He watches for a long time as people trickle in and out.
Finally, though, the smell of food draws his attention away from the temple and to the bustle and rush around him. Sometime while he was distracted Althemi has appeared at his side, and for a time they wander aimlessly through the marketplace. Ravenli buys a sack of dried olives, one of various herbs (thyme, basil, fennel, cloves, nutmeg; he likes the smell, and stuffs them in a pouch he wears around his neck), several blocks of cheese, and a wickedly curved dagger that glints bright and sharp in the sunlight.
They eat a large dinner in the tavern, of zucchini flowers stuffed with rice, cheese and herbs; egg-lemon soup; lamb and potatoes; and a strange pie, baked layers of ground lamb, sliced eggplant and tomato, that their serving girl says is called moussaka. Ravenli brings dessert back to their room: fried balls of dough, drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. He licks his fingers clean as best he can, and wakes in the morning with them stuck in his hair and to the goose feather pillow. Althemi says nothing, but Ravenli knows he's laughing at him.
They leave for Kemet shortly before noon.
The journey, as seafaring ones go, is fairly short.
They're stricken by a quick, angry thunderstorm, halfway through the second day. Ravenli stays on deck, clinging to the side railing, and lets himself be buffeted by rough winds. Beneath them the sea heaves and rolls like an angry serpent, spraying salty water into his face and eyes and open mouth until he chokes on it. Above and around him the boat's crew scurries about shouting orders to each other in a language he doesn't understand.
When the storm passes, Ravenli slinks below deck and shivers in their cabin, grinning and vacant-eyed. Althemi watches until his clothes dry, and they are stiff with salt when Ravenli finally moves.
They reach Omari at sunset on the fourth day.
As they pull into port the sun glows warm off of the wide Iteru River, setting the river ablaze and turning what little glass Ravenli can see into liquid gold. The shadows are long and blue, and people scurry about between wide, flat mud-brick buildings. Thin, gauzy cloth flutters in open windows and doorways.
On the cliffside Ravenli sees the palace, where the great and solemn Nefer lives in solitude and enormous wealth, high above the city like some sort of god. At its side is the High Temple, dedicated to the mighty Amafta, brightly adorned with paintings and carvings and hieroglyphs Ravenli can see even from the river.
Dinner is eaten with the royalty, and it is a complicated affair based entirely on rank and power. Before the food is even served, servants bring each person a hand basin of water, in which to dip their fingers, and cones of scented fat are lit like candles; they smell sweet and inviting. They are given lotus flowers, and Ravenli smiles at the irony.
After a rich dinner of roast oxen and pork, stew, fresh vegetables, bread and beer, entertained by dancers accompanying a small band of musicians, they retreat to the quarters they've been given. Ravenli sits on the wood-framed bed, the mattress stuffed with cotton, and asks, "Who are we killing?"
"The Nefer."
Ravenli chokes on air and stares at him. "What?"
"Our current employer demands the Nefer's head," Althemi says, as though he's speaking of something perfectly normal.
For a long moment Ravenli ponders this. He shrugs. "Alright," he says. "The chaos will be fucking awesome."
"Yes."
"Hey--"
Althemi quirks an eyebrow.
"How are we planning to do this?" Ravenli asks. "How much time will we have?"
Althemi looks sharply at him, eyes narrow and mouth tight. After a moment he says, "The Nefer has made it a nightly habit to walk the grounds of the forbidden halls. He is rarely guarded. He and the guards seem to believe it is a secret."
Ravenli laughs. He looks at the wicked blade he'd gotten in Karolos, rotates it in his hand so that it catches the lamplight. "I want him," he says.
They corner the Nefer in a small alcove of the forbidden halls, and the first thing Ravenli does after he buries the dagger hilt-deep into Nefer's guts is cut out his tongue to stifle the screams. Ravenli laughs as the man gurgles his pain, choking on his own blood. He slides his fingers into the wound and pulls.
As he feels the man's flesh tear beneath his fingers, he understands why Althemi did it to him.
Still laughing, he rips Nefer's intestines from his abdomen, careful not to let the organ break open; the stench would be awful. He coils them around a fist and shoves it down the man's throat until he stops breathing. He whispers, "Calam thanks you for this," lets the intestines fall from his hand to the floor with a wet smack, and smears symbols using Nefer's blood across the floor and walls and his own skin, laughing around the prayers that tumble from his lips.
Althemi watches from across the hall until he's done, then strides over, curls a hand around Ravenli's throat, and throws him against a wall. Ravenli's eyes flash in surprise as a hand punches through his belly, and Althemi growls, "You sacrifice yourself, now, right?"
Ravenli can barely choke out, "What the fuck--"
Althemi slams him against the wall, and Ravenli sees stars. "Right?"
Coughing, he says, "Yes!"
Althemi says nothing, just throws him to the floor and falls upon him like a hawk. He rips Ravenli's stomach open, and Ravenli arches his back and screams as white-hot agony flares along his nerves. Althemi shoves a wad of blood-soaked cloth from Nefer's body into his mouth, snarling, "Shut up."
Ravenli convulses and his eyes roll back in his head. When he bites down, he tastes blood and cloth, and his hands claw at the floor.
Althemi folds over and presses his lips to Ravenli's ear, whispering, low and dangerous, "I'm going to fuck you now."
His mouth is cold against Ravenli's skin, and he shivers violently. Eyes flaring with surprise and a hot rush of desire, Ravenli surges upward, suddenly desperate for contact, and he gasps, "Yes!"
Althemi wrenches Ravenli's trousers off and cleaves his way between his thighs, and Ravenli cries out at the first roll of their hips together. There is a brief moment where Althemi struggles to get the flap of his trousers open, and then--
Oh. Oh.
It hurts, but it's beautiful, glorious, and suddenly the world retracts to the feeling of Althemi between his thighs, cock heavy and cold inside him, driving deep into places that he had never known; Althemi's hands on his hips, a freezing brand across pale skin and bone, forcing their hips together; cool, damp teeth against his throat as Althemi bites, sinking deep into the flesh and raising hot, hot blood to the surface to trickle down his neck.
Althemi is rough; he thrusts hard and fast and Ravenli can feel blood slicking his cock, feels the pain clear and bright, sharp-edged and blending so much with pleasure that he can't tell the difference between the two. Each heavy shove rams into a vulnerable spot, sweet with ecstasy, inside Ravenli, and his hands scrabble for something to hold onto as Althemi fucks him.
He claws at Althemi's back when the corpse-like fingers curl across his chest and nails sink into the skin; slowly, inch by inch, Althemi tears back a strip of his skin, right above his heart. Ravenli screams, muffled only slightly when Althemi shoves his tongue into his mouth, and Althemi shoves his bloody hand through his side and into his abdomen with a force that leaves Ravenli reeling.
His voice cracks on a high whine when he comes.
Short minutes later, after Althemi has thrust so hard he burns the inside of Ravenli's thighs, the feeling of Althemi coming inside him makes him tremble.
For a long time they lay there, Ravenli's skin glistening in the lamplight with a sheen of cooling sweat, semen pooling on his chest. When he finally moves, what seems like hours later, the wound on his chest is mostly healed. The new skin and dried semen pull and stretch at his skin, and he scratches his belly idly.
He is lying in a dry smear of his own blood, over the painted symbols of his ritual. Two feet away lies the eviscerated corpse of their target, abdomen gaping wide. He laughs.
From the vicinity of his shoulder, Althemi makes a questioning noise.
He says, "We just fucked next to a corpse," and laughs again.
Althemi snorts.
Very little changes.
They take a contract in the land of the Black Kings, south of Kemet. Ravenli's heard stories, but he never imagined that the people were actually black-skinned; he finds himself staring more often than he should. They worship their cattle, these Black Kings, and it is not easy to kill one of their higher ranking officials. Once he lies dead on the floor, though, thick black liquid oozes from a dozen wounds in Althemi's skin; Ravenli licks it off of him, and Althemi fucks him against the wall, straddling the man's dead body.
From there they pass through Karolos again to trade the Nefer's head for their bounty, and then they set off north toward Masuria, high in the mountains, where the words contain far too many consonants and not enough vowels for Ravenli's preference, and the cities have names like Kruszwica or Swinoujscie. Here they slaughter a young farmer and his family (wife, two sons and three daughters); they leave symbols in blood on the walls, and a series of scratch marks and a dry, flakey puddle on the dirt floor.
In the tropical forests of Pradesh they hear news of the chaos they'd left behind in Kemet, brought all the way here by the trade routes; Ravenli grins. They narrowly escape being mauled by a giant tiger, and the people ride elephants in their ceremonies. Their target, this time, is a middle-class woman, with a large red dot in the center of her forehead close to her eyebrows; she wears cotton saris in brilliant colors, and thin bands of gold around her wrists that clatter and chime as she moves. They wait until her family is away before they poison her, and as they rut on the floor after, Ravenli stares blankly towards her face, where the skin around her mouth has turned black and her eyes are red with blood beneath the cornea. He moans like a whore when Althemi slices his stomach open so that his guts spill out across the floor.
Days turn to months turn to years, and they travel everywhere: Alemagne, with thick pine forests and bitter winters, the natives speaking in a rough, guttural tongue that appeals to Ravenli partially for that very reason; there's something very visceral about it. Jalal, with its hot, dry deserts, where despite the heat people dress entirely in black, and the language rolls liquid off their tongue. They watch the rise of the Holy Illryian Empire, watch as it conquers most of the world.
The years blur together.
Ravenli doesn't know how long he's been traveling with Althemi when he asks, "How did you die?"
Althemi actually drops his bowl. Ravenli stares as he swears under his breath, and when he straightens the expression on his face is harder than ever to read. "How did you know?"
Ravenli shrugs. "You never breathe," he says. "You're always cold, and you have no pulse."
There is silence for such a long time that Ravenli decides to just continue eating.
"Someone set my heart on fire."
Ravenli freezes.
"So the answer to your earlier question--" Ravenli slowly meets Althemi's too-calm gaze, his eyes wide in horror. "--is yes, we have met before."
The breath is stuck in his lungs, and his mouth is dry. He has to swallow several times before he can speak. "What-- How?"
Althemi shrugs. "I don't know the whole of it," he says. "I remember dying. I remember waking, and being very thirsty, and very cold. I remember a man wearing black robes and talking excitedly to himself about how 'it' had worked. I think he was a sorcerer. I killed him, and ate his heart."
Ravenli stares.
"I tried, once, undoing some of the stitches," he continues. "My leg started rotting within seconds. I've never figured out how, but the stitches are the only thing holding me together."
Swallowing, Ravenli asks, "Why don't you just pull out the stitches?"
"Why don't you just set your heart on fire?"
He wipes suddenly damp palms on his trousers. "Ah."
"What do you want, Ravenli?"
He stares helplessly and says, "I want to be destroyed."
It all began in a little village outside of Krona, where dew glistens like diamonds on green, green grass, and poppies glow like blood splatters against stone decaying with age and moss. They slide like silk over his skin as he wades shirtless into the fields of poppies, whispering in a breeze that drags cool fingers against his sweat-slick skin.
He'd forgotten how hot it got, here.
Ravenli wanders through the overgrown remains of streets, taking in the broken stone shells and even the occasional rotting wooden beam that crumbles beneath his fingertips. There are two enormous peach trees growing in the center of the village, one on each side of the village well, which has collapsed in upon itself; it's too late for the blossoms, but the smell of peaches hangs rich and sweet in the air.
He finds the old garden and weaves himself a chain of the flowers still growing there: Iris, corn marigold, gladiolus, geranium.
"I remember this," he whispers. He doesn't need to look to know Althemi is behind him. "You knew what I was saying all along, didn't you?"
"Yes," Althemi says.
He nods, absently thumbing the stem of a marigold, and turns. "Alright."
They pass through the village gates again and into the sea of swaying poppies. He slips the chain over his head and stands for a long moment, feeling warm sun and cool breeze and delicate petals against his skin. He turns, and Althemi punches through his chest. Ravenli's eyes roll back in his head as Althemi rips his heart out and whispers the key to a fire spell.
Agony explodes across his nerves.
The last things he sees before the world turns black are the flames dancing in Althemi's eyes.
He smiles.
the end
A note on flower symbolism:
bamboo flowers - Asian cultures believe that the blossom of bamboos is a precursor of coming natural disasters
deadly nightshade/belladonna - deception, danger, death
geranium - melancholy
gladiolus - "you pierce the heart like a sword"
iris - death, faith, valor and wisdom
lotus - estranged love, immortality
marigold - affection, cruelty, grief, jealousy
oleander - beware
peach blossoms - "I am your captive"
poppy - eternal sleep, oblivion, imagination, death; poppies often flourish on battlefields
white lily - innocence
email: warfair [at] hotmail.com
Ravenli remembers:
The first time he dies, he is six, and being dedicated to Calam.
It is dark, the sky is bruised, sprinkled with stars like spilled sugar, and the horizon is a splash of crimson where the sun is just beginning to rise.
He is a small boy, slight and pale, with hair the color of milk cream and eyes like old blood. In his left hand he holds a bone dagger, ghostly white in the dark; in his right, a silver needle, thin and glistening like ice. He is naked, a precaution taken so that he can hide no other weapons.
A priest steps forward and wraps black cloth around his eyes, and Ravenli breathes deeply. He smells sweat and rain and linen and sweet peach blossoms and lilies. White ones, he thinks, for purity; it almost makes him smile. A cool breeze raises gooseflesh across his skin, and the damp grass is slick against his bare ankles. Sheep bleat in the distance, and he can hear the whisper of fabric as those around him shift.
He stands motionless, listening to the shimmer of cicadas, and rushes to duck under a blade as it screams over his head. He spins, feels the bite of steel against his ribs and the hot rush of blood. Jabs with the needle, feels it catch in cloth--
Cold steel stabs through his spine and into his heart.
The crack as the sword breaks his sternum is a sound more felt than heard. His legs turn limp - he cannot feel them - and he thinks it ironic that the sword which killed him is all that keeps him upright. He tries to call out, to say something, but all that emerges is a gurgle because his lungs, his mouth, are filled with blood. His heart stops.
Ravenli feels himself die, and it is glorious.
When he wakes, there is a subtle but powerful ache in his chest, and it leaves him gasping.
They tell him he has given himself to his god, that Calam is pleased with his sacrifice. They say Calam has given a little of himself unto Ravenli as reward.
Later, a small boy, smaller even than he is, says that, when they had brought Ravenli back to the village, he wore a skeleton grin.
He asks, What?
And the boy says, Your eyes, sir. They were empty, like a skull's.
Ravenli stares, and the boy turns red and ducks his head. From the doorway, Eldest says, Calam is pleased, Ravenli. Tomorrow, you will join the ranks of his Chosen ones.
He smiles.
When he can, Ravenli looks at his chest, and he can almost feel his heart fail again when he sees the scar, glistening and pink against his skin.
Ravenli remembers the words now, though he has forgotten the voices - even his own.
Still.
By the time Ravenli is fifteen, he has died more times than he can count. It is a heady thing, feeling his heart stop even as his body begins to heal itself - the speed at which his cells reform, his bodily functions return, grows.
He is disappointed, though. He has died so many times, but he's never been truly destroyed. It is a longing that aches in his bones, as real and physical as the ghost pains of his first death.
He is nineteen the first time he truly kills someone.
Ravenli has forgotten the boy's name, as he has forgotten the sound of his own voice, but he does remember that he had a shock of red hair, morbidly vivid against his pale skin, and eyes like the summer sky after a storm.
They are experimenting, he and this boy, a kind of game to see how much pain they can tolerate. They have long passed mere injury - Ravenli has had his skull caved in, and there is still blood and bone and brain matter tangled in his hair.
He remembers, after the world came back into focus and he felt himself breathe again, yelling about how much that hurt. The boy is laughing at him, taunting him, and Ravenli sneers and punches through his chest. The boy's ribs break with a sharp, wet snap, and bone and blood burst through his skin as one. Sunlight glitters knife-bright across the boy's smile, frozen and bleeding. Ravenli wraps a fist around his heart and rips it from his chest.
Hot, hot blood pulses into his hand and down his arm. The smell is thick in his nostrils, heavy on his tongue, and over the roaring in his ears he can hear the boy's screams. For a long moment Ravenli watches him writhe, noting the way he twitches.
Eventually, the screams die into pathetic little gurgles, so Ravenli figures the pain has faded. They're still playing the game, though, so he searches for something else to try. His attention is caught by the pyre roaring on the hillside, and he grins as he looks at the heart that falters in his palm. He whispers the key to a fire spell.
The heart erupts into flame, unfolding like a flower at dawn, and the boy's screams begin anew as the fire engulfs Ravenli's hand. He can feel his flesh bubble and pop and split, but there is a desperate note in the boy's screams that makes him stare.
A dull, wet thud snaps his attention from the boy to his hand, where the fire has collapsed in upon itself and only a pile of ashes remains.
He looks at the boy, sees that the wound in his chest has stopped leaking blood. A strange feeling is rising within him, and he sits there for hours, waiting.
His hand is entirely healed by the time he realizes that the boy is not going to get up. The sky is seared by a burning sunset, and the light turns the hole in the boy's chest into a corpse's mouth, all crooked teeth and rotting lips and swollen tongue.
The strange feeling swells and bursts.
Ravenli laughs.
Three days later he stands before the village pyre, listening to its rumbling howl. He closes his eyes against its brilliance, and thinks of the town sleeping below; the streets are lit only by lamplight and the moon, shining swollen and pale against the midnight sky.
For a long time, he thinks.
The fire's glow catches on his hair, glimmering like smoldering embers, or molten gold. He turns and walks down the hill, through the streets, and pauses at the village garden; the moonlight has washed the colors out to shades of gray, but the flowers glitter like jewels against the soil and the two giant peach trees stand solid and firm in their midst.
He continues on, through the village gates, and turns. He watches the pyre, the way it flares and spits glowing sparks, and thinks of the scripture, how Calam was born from the fire burning upon that hill eons ago, when the world was still young and humans a new race. He thinks of how Calam brought with him a reign of blood and destruction and fire, conquering the world and ruling with a cruel hand until one of his own underlings betrayed him, cutting his heart out in his sleep and tossing it into the flames from which he'd come.
Ravenli is tired of this village. It has given him all it can, and its ways are old and tired. They stifle him, cage him in with tradition-gilded bars.
He calls the fires down upon the village, stands for a long moment and lets them engulf him. His skin boils, cracks and burns, sizzles and pops.
He turns and walks away, leaving the village a roaring inferno behind him.
He has never gone back. Now, he likes to imagine that all that remains of the village are the shattered shells of stone buildings, green with moss and ivy. There will be poppies, he thinks, glowing in the harsh sunlight as they sway in the breeze. They will look like splatters of blood against the decaying stone.
And so the seasons pass, but he cannot tell you how many he has seen. He does not even know how old he is.
It takes him years to find something to do with himself. Eventually he falls into the mercenary life, and he is good at it, better than most of the people he works with. He refuses to join a company - too many dues and restrictions - but even as an independent mercenary he has built himself an impressive reputation. His fighting style is old, unorthodox, and generally unrecognizable, but there is no doubt of its power.
His latest assignment is in the highlands of Veralta, where the ocean breaks and foams against black cliffs and the air is bitter with salt and brine. The village is old and wet; the shacks sag against each other as wind whips through the cracks in board and roof, and the roads are dark and narrow and twist around themselves like some ancient sea serpent.
Ravenli looks outside, where iron-bellied clouds drip fat, cold gobs of rain like slime. He glances behind him, into the dark of his room, and then again outside; the world is gray and the edges made soft by rain. He leaves his cloak and shirt crumpled on the bed and steps barefoot into the street, letting the rain slide like eels over his skin.
The castle towers over the village, high on the hillside. It is worn and decaying, the cliffside wall crumbling over the edge, and a freezing fog hangs like a shroud over the turrets and bleeds ice crystals like knives down the castle walls.
Even in this cold, he loves the rain. It tastes sweet and clean on his tongue, and cools the burning behind eyes that ache from the sea wind. He thinks he used to play in the rain before he was dedicated, remembers fragments and flashes of splashing in mud puddles and, maybe, his mother. But he lost the ability to tell real memories from the ones he created long ago.
Someone is watching him.
He spins, needle-blade jumping to his palm.
But when he looks, he finds no one.
His employer is balding and fat, his robes bursting at the seams and his forehead glistening with sweat. He has a servant whose entire purpose is to wipe the sweat off his brow. He eyes Ravenli's chest, bare beneath the half-open cloak, and grins like a lecherous pig. He says, You're pretty enough to be my little wife.
Ravenli sneers, says something about how he'd love that, wouldn't he, the fat cow? And then he grins, wide and insolent.
The man turns an ugly red against the purple of his robe, sprays out some verbal abuse and a lot of saliva, and then demands an explanation of why the job hasn't been finished.
Smirking, Ravenli apologizes, but his dress hasn't been tailored to fit yet. Broad shoulders, you know. And, in case he'd forgotten, the ball was being held tonight, so he hadn't really had the chance, now, had he?
His employer's thin lips quiver, and the vein Ravenli can barely see in his trembling jowls throbs. Ravenli smiles, and leaves.
Unfortunately, though, he wasn't lying; this assignment requires he disguise himself as a woman, and he may be slight but years of wielding his scythe have thickened his shoulders.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The sun burns white through soft clouds of gray pearl and smoky blue, glittering bright and sharp across ice and glass. He stops at the tailor to purchase his gown, a frilly confection of gray silk and white furs, and ignores the looks the tailor gives him.
When he arrives, decked in his dress and a jester's mask of scarlet feathers that sparkle with jewels, the ball is in full flow. People swarm and dance in a sea of ever shifting colors, and in the far corner a group of musicians play a lively waltz, only just audible over the crowd. The ballroom is done in shades of polished gold and rich creams, with shimmering gold curtains drawn to each side of the broad windows, and all the hired staff wear uniforms of cream and gold trim.
There is no mistaking Ravenli for a woman, but it is deliberate; his target is whispered to lust after pretty men in women's clothing, and Ravenli knew this when taking the assignment. He takes his time, though, dancing with whoever is willing, and when he finds his target the gilded clock above the massive fireplace reads two hours before midnight. He exchanges pleasantries, curtsies and giggles and blushes like a little girl though his skin is crawling, and fakes shy acceptance when he is asked outside.
On the balcony, obscured by thick golden curtains, the air is cool and dry. The moon is soft and silver behind dark, heavy clouds that scuttle across the night, and Ravenli sees no stars. He watches from beneath his eyelashes, assuming coyness, as his target stretches out a hand and caresses his cheek, telling Ravenli that he is beautiful. Ravenli wants to bite him, can almost feel his teeth sink into flesh and taste the blood burst across his tongue.
He does not.
Instead, he palms the bone dagger he has hidden in his sleeve and slashes it across the man's jugular. Blood gushes forth, splattering hot against his face, and he buries the blade in the man's belly, ripping upward until it snags against his ribs.
He whispers, Calam thanks you for this, and he laughs at the terror and horror in eyes that grow glassy with death.
The man dies with nothing more than a pathetic little gurgle.
Whispering prayers, Ravenli paints symbols on the walls and floor and his own skin with the cooling blood. It is thick and sticky on his face, his arms, his chest, and he shivers.
When he's done, he slides the dagger back up his sleeve and vaults over the balcony railing, hits the cobblestone with a force that breaks his legs like dry branches, and waits until they heal just enough to walk before setting off down the street. He keeps to the shadows, because even simple villagers such as these will notice someone covered in blood, and as he leaves the walls surrounding the castle the cobblestone melts into packed dirt. The frills and lace of his skirt trail in the mud, and the inside layers cling cold to his legs. A cool breeze brings gooseflesh to his skin and dries the blood so that it itches and flakes.
He enters his room through the window, which he'd left unlocked, and he pauses to glance at his reflection in the bedside mirror. Dried blood cements chunks of his hair, turned the color of rust, to his face and neck. Ravenli grins, and remembers:
You had a skeleton's grin, sir.
He laughs, and sinks his bone dagger into his belly. He laughs as the blood boils forth, laughs as it saturates his gown, laughs as it soaks down and down--
Pale hands, gray like ash or the skin of a corpse, catch at the edges of the open wound and pull.
Ravenli feels it like he has felt nothing since his first death. He feels his skin stretch, feels it tear, and pain explodes through his senses, red and hot. Like fire. Like blood. Corpse-like fingers slippery with blood claw at the muscle, ripping him open, and Ravenli collapses as his guts spill out and onto the floor with a heavy, wet smack.
Through eyes hazy and unfocused with pain, Ravenli thinks he is staring into the face of his god. He breathes, "Calam," and feels agony and ecstasy roar through him like a hymn as fingers made warm by his insides bury themselves deep in his abdomen.
His eyes roll back in his head as the world turns white.
When he wakes, his heart is aching beneath the scar and there is a man sitting at the foot of his bed.
Ravenli's first impression is of red hair so vivid it burns. It is a shock against the room's dimness and the man's gray skin. His eyes are a poisonous, glowing green, with no pupil and black sclera. He looks like a corpse-puppet, held together only by the thick black thread Ravenli can see woven through the skin of the joints not hidden by clothing. The seam of his lips stretches almost to his ears, and there is a row of threads binding each side.
He grins like someone has cracked open a rotten melon, and says, "My name is Althemi, but if you like feel free to call me the name of your god."
Ravenli stares.
Althemi's voice is low and rough, and it is the most glorious thing he has ever heard.
Finally, he says, "You ripped me open."
Althemi shrugs and smiles, and it makes Ravenli shudder. "You liked it," he says. Ravenli can't read the expression on his face.
He's opened his mouth to respond when he realizes that not only had he heard Althemi's voice, instead of just the words, he'd heard his own. Ravenli goes still, and for a long moment the world seems to hesitate. He feels something shiver across his skin, and his heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and then he starts speaking. The words boil out of his mouth like vomit, roll off his tongue like crashing waves, and he knows not what he is saying but for the first time he can remember it's not the voice he doesn't hear but the words. His voice - his voice - is low and resonant and the tiniest bit raspy, and he thinks it is talking about the sky, gray with clouds like satin worn and old enough that it has lost its sheen.
Althemi's fingers are around his throat before he can comprehend he's even moved, nails biting into his skin, and he says, "If you don't shut up I'm going to rip out your vocal cords."
Ravenli falls silent.
After a moment, Althemi pulls his hand away, and Ravenli catches a glimpse of his fingers.
They are gray, the skin almost translucent, and his nails are glossy like polished glass. His nail beds, though, are a deep, blackish purple.
Like belladonna.
He stares, transfixed and chewing at his lip, and he has to remind himself to breathe.
He leaves with Althemi in the morning, who is on his way to a contract target in Hamunandi, because being with him is a little like dying. They stop just long enough for Ravenli to get his payment, and they leave with blood and fat splattered across the windows and stuck to their skin. Ravenli grimaces and brushes at his cheek with the back of his hand, and only smears the blood further. There is a bubble of fat tangled in his hair, and as he pulls it out and tosses it away he says, "This is fucking gross."
His voice shivers along his spine, and he smiles.
Althemi doesn't look at him. "You make a horrible woman," he says. "Don't act like one."
Ravenli growls and says, "Fuck you."
Their travels lead them to the basins and plateaus of the Salween Desert to the north of Hamunandi, where there is not so much sand as bare, wind-scoured rock, and the sky is blue and clear.
It takes them two weeks to cross the desert. Ravenli talks altogether too much, and Althemi's temper simmers until it boils over and he snaps Ravenli's neck, or makes good on his threat to rip out his vocal cords. Ravenli will swear and curse him if he can still speak, but the truth is that he hasn't died so often since he lived in the village, and it's soothing an ache he hadn't realized was there.
Atop the last plateau, Ravenli pauses.
Before them the plateau joins the valley in a roll of brown cliffs, melting into low round hills and then a broad, grassy plain. The sun is just beginning to set, washing the world in shades of deep purple and gold, and the plateau's shadow is long and dark. Ravenli, though, can still make out the orchard, leaves frosted with gold. In the distance, smoke rises from a chimney in curls of silver, and a cool breeze brings with it the sweet aroma of peaches.
He breathes deeply, feeling something warm rush through him, and lets his eyes fall shut. His thumb runs across the scar on his chest.
When he opens his eyes again, Althemi has already started off down the cliff.
"Have you ever had peaches?" he asks the next morning.
They are walking through the orchard, between carefully cultivated rows of trees, and the scent is wreathed about him.
Althemi looks at him, and when Ravenli sighs he tastes peaches.
So he's surprised when Althemi says, "Once. Long ago."
Ravenli glances at him, eyebrows lifted, and something about the way a shimmer of sunlight lands on Althemi's face turns his blood cold. He remembers burning red hair and screams and so much blood as the heart he holds in his hands catches fire, and he asks, voice shaking, "Have we--"
The words catch in his throat, and he can't even make himself ask, Have we met before?
"What?"
He swallows and shakes his head. "Never mind," he says. "It's nothing."
Venom-green eyes narrow - Althemi obviously doesn't believe him - but Ravenli's attention has been caught by a flash of color behind him. He moves around Althemi, lifting a low-hanging branch, and finds a single, delicate pale pink flower. He smiles, cupping the blossom in his palm, and whispers, "I am your captive."
"What?" Althemi repeats, and he sounds angry.
Ravenli plucks the flower and turns around. It looks so small in his hands, but even smaller tucked into the corner of the half-mask Althemi wears to hide his stitches. He runs his hands over Althemi's shoulders, down his arms - so broad, so much larger than he is; he hadn't really noticed before - and feels the muscles tense beneath his fingers. The blossom is frail and almost white against the black of Althemi's cloak, but its dozens of thin, deep pink stamen float proudly in the faint breeze.
He says, "Keep it," and can't look away.
Althemi is silent for a long moment before he says, "I told you to stop acting like a woman." But he doesn't move to throw it away.
"Fuck you, Althemi."
As they leave the orchard, Ravenli snags a peach and leaves a small fortune in gold discs in return. He sighs in bliss as he takes the first bite: Soft, soft white flesh that almost melts before his teeth, and a rich sweetness that bursts across his tongue. Its juice glistens sticky on his lips.
They travel for months through Hamunandi.
Through forests of enormous bamboo trees, where Ravenli raves and points until Althemi punches a bamboo branch through his skull. He gives Althemi a bamboo flower, a thin, long, spiky thing of deep reddish purple, and they see one of the legendary bamboo bears.
Across low, forested mountains, thick with the scent of pine. Althemi pushes him down a slope of loose gray rock, where he startles a browsing moon bear. He watches as it mauls him, and makes no move to help. It takes a week for his shattered bones and mangled flesh to heal, and Ravenli shoves a cluster of white rhododendrons in his face and growls, "You're a fucking asshole."
The lowlands of southern Hamunandi are flat and open, cracked gray earth and brittle vegetation whose color seems to have been sucked out by the heat. Slicing through the steppe is the Yellow River, glittering like burnished steel in the blistering sunlight, and it is this they follow into the great city of Bayankali. The roads are old and worn into deep ruts by carriage wheels and the colors are no brighter than the steppe, but the atmosphere is warm and hangs over the city like heat haze.
They eat a dinner of rice and peach-glazed fish, and Ravenli buys oranges and yellow plums and dumplings filled with sweet bean paste from vendors on the street. Nightfall brings with it brightly colored paper lanterns and the summer festival. Althemi waits just long enough for the fireworks to end to remind Ravenli, who is laughing like a child, of the reason they are here.
Ravenli glowers and says, "Thanks for ruining the mood, asshole," but he follows readily enough.
It's almost too easy to slip the poison into the noble's tea, and they watch from a side vendor (Ravenli orders steamed noodles over fried egg) as the man turns purple and starts clawing at his throat. Porcelain shatters as his wife rushes to help, and there is a wet crack and splatter of blood as the man's spasms throw him to the ground. His mouth is speckled with foam, his eyes rolled back in his head so only the whites are visible, and his tongue is black and swollen when it lolls from his gaping mouth.
The wife screams, and Ravenli sneers. "Fucking annoying," he mutters. "And poison's fucking gross, you know that?"
Althemi says, "Shut up."
Ravenli swears and throws a chopstick at him.
They leave before dawn, following the Yellow River until it meets the coastline, watching as it slowly turns the muddy yellow that gives it its name. Along the way, Ravenli spots a splash of pink, and he laughs as he picks a cluster of oleander. Althemi takes it without a word.
Ravenli yawns as Althemi charters a ship, and spends most of the journey sleeping below deck.
Roughly a year later, their travels bring them briefly to the Elladan city-state of Karolos, with its bright, rocky coasts and warm, dry summers. Ravenli eats an orange in the shade of a small building while Althemi speaks inside with the owner of the house (one of his "contacts," he says), and he stands when Althemi leaves. His fingers are sticky with juice, and the smell is sharp and tangy in his nostrils.
Althemi says, "We'll stay the night, and leave for Omari in the morning."
Ravenli blinks. "We're going to Kemet?"
He gets no response, but he follows Althemi to, he assumes, the tavern in which they'll be staying.
It's directly off of the central marketplace, and he stays outside while Althemi haggles over prices with the innkeeper. Ravenli finds himself staring at what the natives call the Acropolis: High on a rocky brown hill, it is broad and flat, and upon it stand several buildings, all brightly painted and in the strangely elegant architecture so commonly found in Ellada. What really draws his eye, though, is the enormous temple on the crown of the hill, what looks from his vantage point like a slab of granite held up by nothing more than tall, sweeping columns topped with smooth capitals that flare outwards to meet the ceiling. He watches for a long time as people trickle in and out.
Finally, though, the smell of food draws his attention away from the temple and to the bustle and rush around him. Sometime while he was distracted Althemi has appeared at his side, and for a time they wander aimlessly through the marketplace. Ravenli buys a sack of dried olives, one of various herbs (thyme, basil, fennel, cloves, nutmeg; he likes the smell, and stuffs them in a pouch he wears around his neck), several blocks of cheese, and a wickedly curved dagger that glints bright and sharp in the sunlight.
They eat a large dinner in the tavern, of zucchini flowers stuffed with rice, cheese and herbs; egg-lemon soup; lamb and potatoes; and a strange pie, baked layers of ground lamb, sliced eggplant and tomato, that their serving girl says is called moussaka. Ravenli brings dessert back to their room: fried balls of dough, drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. He licks his fingers clean as best he can, and wakes in the morning with them stuck in his hair and to the goose feather pillow. Althemi says nothing, but Ravenli knows he's laughing at him.
They leave for Kemet shortly before noon.
The journey, as seafaring ones go, is fairly short.
They're stricken by a quick, angry thunderstorm, halfway through the second day. Ravenli stays on deck, clinging to the side railing, and lets himself be buffeted by rough winds. Beneath them the sea heaves and rolls like an angry serpent, spraying salty water into his face and eyes and open mouth until he chokes on it. Above and around him the boat's crew scurries about shouting orders to each other in a language he doesn't understand.
When the storm passes, Ravenli slinks below deck and shivers in their cabin, grinning and vacant-eyed. Althemi watches until his clothes dry, and they are stiff with salt when Ravenli finally moves.
They reach Omari at sunset on the fourth day.
As they pull into port the sun glows warm off of the wide Iteru River, setting the river ablaze and turning what little glass Ravenli can see into liquid gold. The shadows are long and blue, and people scurry about between wide, flat mud-brick buildings. Thin, gauzy cloth flutters in open windows and doorways.
On the cliffside Ravenli sees the palace, where the great and solemn Nefer lives in solitude and enormous wealth, high above the city like some sort of god. At its side is the High Temple, dedicated to the mighty Amafta, brightly adorned with paintings and carvings and hieroglyphs Ravenli can see even from the river.
Dinner is eaten with the royalty, and it is a complicated affair based entirely on rank and power. Before the food is even served, servants bring each person a hand basin of water, in which to dip their fingers, and cones of scented fat are lit like candles; they smell sweet and inviting. They are given lotus flowers, and Ravenli smiles at the irony.
After a rich dinner of roast oxen and pork, stew, fresh vegetables, bread and beer, entertained by dancers accompanying a small band of musicians, they retreat to the quarters they've been given. Ravenli sits on the wood-framed bed, the mattress stuffed with cotton, and asks, "Who are we killing?"
"The Nefer."
Ravenli chokes on air and stares at him. "What?"
"Our current employer demands the Nefer's head," Althemi says, as though he's speaking of something perfectly normal.
For a long moment Ravenli ponders this. He shrugs. "Alright," he says. "The chaos will be fucking awesome."
"Yes."
"Hey--"
Althemi quirks an eyebrow.
"How are we planning to do this?" Ravenli asks. "How much time will we have?"
Althemi looks sharply at him, eyes narrow and mouth tight. After a moment he says, "The Nefer has made it a nightly habit to walk the grounds of the forbidden halls. He is rarely guarded. He and the guards seem to believe it is a secret."
Ravenli laughs. He looks at the wicked blade he'd gotten in Karolos, rotates it in his hand so that it catches the lamplight. "I want him," he says.
They corner the Nefer in a small alcove of the forbidden halls, and the first thing Ravenli does after he buries the dagger hilt-deep into Nefer's guts is cut out his tongue to stifle the screams. Ravenli laughs as the man gurgles his pain, choking on his own blood. He slides his fingers into the wound and pulls.
As he feels the man's flesh tear beneath his fingers, he understands why Althemi did it to him.
Still laughing, he rips Nefer's intestines from his abdomen, careful not to let the organ break open; the stench would be awful. He coils them around a fist and shoves it down the man's throat until he stops breathing. He whispers, "Calam thanks you for this," lets the intestines fall from his hand to the floor with a wet smack, and smears symbols using Nefer's blood across the floor and walls and his own skin, laughing around the prayers that tumble from his lips.
Althemi watches from across the hall until he's done, then strides over, curls a hand around Ravenli's throat, and throws him against a wall. Ravenli's eyes flash in surprise as a hand punches through his belly, and Althemi growls, "You sacrifice yourself, now, right?"
Ravenli can barely choke out, "What the fuck--"
Althemi slams him against the wall, and Ravenli sees stars. "Right?"
Coughing, he says, "Yes!"
Althemi says nothing, just throws him to the floor and falls upon him like a hawk. He rips Ravenli's stomach open, and Ravenli arches his back and screams as white-hot agony flares along his nerves. Althemi shoves a wad of blood-soaked cloth from Nefer's body into his mouth, snarling, "Shut up."
Ravenli convulses and his eyes roll back in his head. When he bites down, he tastes blood and cloth, and his hands claw at the floor.
Althemi folds over and presses his lips to Ravenli's ear, whispering, low and dangerous, "I'm going to fuck you now."
His mouth is cold against Ravenli's skin, and he shivers violently. Eyes flaring with surprise and a hot rush of desire, Ravenli surges upward, suddenly desperate for contact, and he gasps, "Yes!"
Althemi wrenches Ravenli's trousers off and cleaves his way between his thighs, and Ravenli cries out at the first roll of their hips together. There is a brief moment where Althemi struggles to get the flap of his trousers open, and then--
Oh. Oh.
It hurts, but it's beautiful, glorious, and suddenly the world retracts to the feeling of Althemi between his thighs, cock heavy and cold inside him, driving deep into places that he had never known; Althemi's hands on his hips, a freezing brand across pale skin and bone, forcing their hips together; cool, damp teeth against his throat as Althemi bites, sinking deep into the flesh and raising hot, hot blood to the surface to trickle down his neck.
Althemi is rough; he thrusts hard and fast and Ravenli can feel blood slicking his cock, feels the pain clear and bright, sharp-edged and blending so much with pleasure that he can't tell the difference between the two. Each heavy shove rams into a vulnerable spot, sweet with ecstasy, inside Ravenli, and his hands scrabble for something to hold onto as Althemi fucks him.
He claws at Althemi's back when the corpse-like fingers curl across his chest and nails sink into the skin; slowly, inch by inch, Althemi tears back a strip of his skin, right above his heart. Ravenli screams, muffled only slightly when Althemi shoves his tongue into his mouth, and Althemi shoves his bloody hand through his side and into his abdomen with a force that leaves Ravenli reeling.
His voice cracks on a high whine when he comes.
Short minutes later, after Althemi has thrust so hard he burns the inside of Ravenli's thighs, the feeling of Althemi coming inside him makes him tremble.
For a long time they lay there, Ravenli's skin glistening in the lamplight with a sheen of cooling sweat, semen pooling on his chest. When he finally moves, what seems like hours later, the wound on his chest is mostly healed. The new skin and dried semen pull and stretch at his skin, and he scratches his belly idly.
He is lying in a dry smear of his own blood, over the painted symbols of his ritual. Two feet away lies the eviscerated corpse of their target, abdomen gaping wide. He laughs.
From the vicinity of his shoulder, Althemi makes a questioning noise.
He says, "We just fucked next to a corpse," and laughs again.
Althemi snorts.
Very little changes.
They take a contract in the land of the Black Kings, south of Kemet. Ravenli's heard stories, but he never imagined that the people were actually black-skinned; he finds himself staring more often than he should. They worship their cattle, these Black Kings, and it is not easy to kill one of their higher ranking officials. Once he lies dead on the floor, though, thick black liquid oozes from a dozen wounds in Althemi's skin; Ravenli licks it off of him, and Althemi fucks him against the wall, straddling the man's dead body.
From there they pass through Karolos again to trade the Nefer's head for their bounty, and then they set off north toward Masuria, high in the mountains, where the words contain far too many consonants and not enough vowels for Ravenli's preference, and the cities have names like Kruszwica or Swinoujscie. Here they slaughter a young farmer and his family (wife, two sons and three daughters); they leave symbols in blood on the walls, and a series of scratch marks and a dry, flakey puddle on the dirt floor.
In the tropical forests of Pradesh they hear news of the chaos they'd left behind in Kemet, brought all the way here by the trade routes; Ravenli grins. They narrowly escape being mauled by a giant tiger, and the people ride elephants in their ceremonies. Their target, this time, is a middle-class woman, with a large red dot in the center of her forehead close to her eyebrows; she wears cotton saris in brilliant colors, and thin bands of gold around her wrists that clatter and chime as she moves. They wait until her family is away before they poison her, and as they rut on the floor after, Ravenli stares blankly towards her face, where the skin around her mouth has turned black and her eyes are red with blood beneath the cornea. He moans like a whore when Althemi slices his stomach open so that his guts spill out across the floor.
Days turn to months turn to years, and they travel everywhere: Alemagne, with thick pine forests and bitter winters, the natives speaking in a rough, guttural tongue that appeals to Ravenli partially for that very reason; there's something very visceral about it. Jalal, with its hot, dry deserts, where despite the heat people dress entirely in black, and the language rolls liquid off their tongue. They watch the rise of the Holy Illryian Empire, watch as it conquers most of the world.
The years blur together.
Ravenli doesn't know how long he's been traveling with Althemi when he asks, "How did you die?"
Althemi actually drops his bowl. Ravenli stares as he swears under his breath, and when he straightens the expression on his face is harder than ever to read. "How did you know?"
Ravenli shrugs. "You never breathe," he says. "You're always cold, and you have no pulse."
There is silence for such a long time that Ravenli decides to just continue eating.
"Someone set my heart on fire."
Ravenli freezes.
"So the answer to your earlier question--" Ravenli slowly meets Althemi's too-calm gaze, his eyes wide in horror. "--is yes, we have met before."
The breath is stuck in his lungs, and his mouth is dry. He has to swallow several times before he can speak. "What-- How?"
Althemi shrugs. "I don't know the whole of it," he says. "I remember dying. I remember waking, and being very thirsty, and very cold. I remember a man wearing black robes and talking excitedly to himself about how 'it' had worked. I think he was a sorcerer. I killed him, and ate his heart."
Ravenli stares.
"I tried, once, undoing some of the stitches," he continues. "My leg started rotting within seconds. I've never figured out how, but the stitches are the only thing holding me together."
Swallowing, Ravenli asks, "Why don't you just pull out the stitches?"
"Why don't you just set your heart on fire?"
He wipes suddenly damp palms on his trousers. "Ah."
"What do you want, Ravenli?"
He stares helplessly and says, "I want to be destroyed."
It all began in a little village outside of Krona, where dew glistens like diamonds on green, green grass, and poppies glow like blood splatters against stone decaying with age and moss. They slide like silk over his skin as he wades shirtless into the fields of poppies, whispering in a breeze that drags cool fingers against his sweat-slick skin.
He'd forgotten how hot it got, here.
Ravenli wanders through the overgrown remains of streets, taking in the broken stone shells and even the occasional rotting wooden beam that crumbles beneath his fingertips. There are two enormous peach trees growing in the center of the village, one on each side of the village well, which has collapsed in upon itself; it's too late for the blossoms, but the smell of peaches hangs rich and sweet in the air.
He finds the old garden and weaves himself a chain of the flowers still growing there: Iris, corn marigold, gladiolus, geranium.
"I remember this," he whispers. He doesn't need to look to know Althemi is behind him. "You knew what I was saying all along, didn't you?"
"Yes," Althemi says.
He nods, absently thumbing the stem of a marigold, and turns. "Alright."
They pass through the village gates again and into the sea of swaying poppies. He slips the chain over his head and stands for a long moment, feeling warm sun and cool breeze and delicate petals against his skin. He turns, and Althemi punches through his chest. Ravenli's eyes roll back in his head as Althemi rips his heart out and whispers the key to a fire spell.
Agony explodes across his nerves.
The last things he sees before the world turns black are the flames dancing in Althemi's eyes.
He smiles.
the end
A note on flower symbolism:
bamboo flowers - Asian cultures believe that the blossom of bamboos is a precursor of coming natural disasters
deadly nightshade/belladonna - deception, danger, death
geranium - melancholy
gladiolus - "you pierce the heart like a sword"
iris - death, faith, valor and wisdom
lotus - estranged love, immortality
marigold - affection, cruelty, grief, jealousy
oleander - beware
peach blossoms - "I am your captive"
poppy - eternal sleep, oblivion, imagination, death; poppies often flourish on battlefields
white lily - innocence