The Curse of Immortality Read online

  At last, the action died down, and when the crowd parted, there was D’Arbignal, trundled up like a pig.

  His face was a mottled red of insults to his flesh. He was still smiling but the smile was ghastly and blood-stained.

  “Not so quick with the wisecracks now, are you?” Werewolf said, his arms akimbo. “Say something funny. I dare you.”

  D’Arbignal spat blood between Werewolf’s feet.

  “Don’t forget to bring my hat,” he said levelly. “If you lose it, I’ll take it personally.”

  “It’ll look good on your head once they’ve chopped it off.”

  “Why would they chop off my hat?”

  Werewolf answered with a kick to D’Arbignal’s face.

  D’Arbignal glared at Werewolf.

  “So when you told me to say something funny,” he said, “you weren’t being serious?”

  There was probably more to the exchange but just then, a hand grabbed Belle’s ear lobe and twisted. The pain drove her to her feet.

  “What part of ‘keep him in the tavern’ did you not understand?” Piter said, his enraged face looming large in her field of vision.

  He yanked her ear savagely, forcing her to follow him. She wailed in pain.

  “Outside,” Piter said.

  10

  Fancy stood outside in the rain shivering, with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Her hair was a sodden bird’s nest though it had long since ceased to be raining. The alley was dark and still as death.

  “Look, I’m sorry—” Belle began.

  “You had one fucking job,” Piter said, scowling. “How fucking hard was it for a pair of whores to keep a drunk guy drinking?”

  “Look—”

  Piter grabbed her crotch hard. Pain washed through her like a sickly green wave. Instantly, tears were in her eyes. She wanted to beg him to release her but she couldn’t breathe.

  “One. Fucking. Job,” Piter repeated and squeezed harder. Her whole world was a nauseous agony. “Who took you in when you were homeless? Who showed you how to make a living when that good-for-nothing husband ran off on you? Who paid for his burial when you couldn’t afford a place to shit?”

  She tried to mouth the words, “You did,” but she couldn’t muster the breath.

  “That’s right,” Piter said. He leaned into her, whispered into her ear. “You’re starting to show your age now, aren’t you? Not exactly raking it in anymore? I have half a mind to toss you back on the streets. Make Fancy my main girl. Then train a new one fresh. What do you say to that?”

  When she didn’t answer, he threw her against the wooden wall of the building next to her shack. She bounced against it, stumbled, and fell to the wet earth of the alley, her face and chest covered in mud.

  “That’s right,” he said, smiling. “You don’t got nuffin to say. That’s what I like to hear from you: nuffin. There’s only one reason whores’ve got mouths and it ain’t for speaking, ain’t that right?”

  She nodded her head weakly, trying hard not to vomit at his feet.

  “Honest, I’m not sure what I’m going to do wif you,” he said. “Going to have to give it a little think after I deal with this guy. From what Fancy tells me, he’s worth thirty gold. Even divided a few ways, that’s still not a bad night’s work. Not at all. So I’m going to get my money and think. And you’d best be turning in trick after trick to make me happy.” He shrugged. “Anyway, that’s what I would do if I was you.”

  Piter scraped the bottom of his boot along the ground and then pressed it against her face. She could taste the bitter wet mud and she winced. The boot vanished and Piter was heading back into the shack.

  Belle lay on the ground for a long time, waiting for the pain and the humiliation to subside. Eventually, she got onto her hands and knees and stayed like that, breathing air into her lungs. She still thought she might throw up so she took each movement slowly.

  She caught a slight motion out of the corner of her eye and she looked up to see Fancy still there, looking at her. Belle expected Fancy to look apologetic, or worst case, defiant and nasty. Instead, Fancy watched her cautiously, as though she were an unusual bug she had discovered: one that might prove to be venomous.

  Belle opened her mouth to speak but thought better of it. She painfully got to her feet and stood indecisively.

  Where did she even begin to piece her life back together after a dressing down like that?

  The sound of the shack’s wooden door falling to the ground postponed the soul-searching for now. The men from the shack emerged carrying a struggling D’Arbignal, who was now gagged as well as bound. The men whispered urgent instructions to each other as they carried the swordsman off back in the direction of the Welcoming Arms. After a moment, Fancy took off after them without a word.

  When they had left, Belle lifted the door back to the shack. She looked inside one more time, at where the sleeping mat had been. At where she had rested against D’Arbignal.

  She saw his hat laying on the floor, completely out-of-place with its garish white plume in the drab darkness of the shack. She entered the shack and picked the hat up, dusting it off. She hugged it to her chest as though it were a dear friend.

  She replaced the door and headed off after the others.

  11

  “What kind of name is Willow, anyway?” one of the mob was asking as they went through his things in the private room at the back of the Welcoming Arms. “That’s a strange name for a man.”

  Werewolf unsheathed D’Arbignal’s orange sword. He took a couple of experimental cuts through the air with it and shook his head. “The balance seems off on his sword. That something a blacksmith can fix?” When nobody answered him, he shrugged and added, “Probably can find someone to buy it though if he don’t know about swords.”

  Another man was fiddling with D’Arbignal’s travel bag. Belle recognized him from an unimpressive five minutes in a back alley. His name was something like Bray or Ray, and he cried when he had intercourse.

  Bray or Ray lifted the bag, which hung from his fist like a limp rope. When he put the bag down and it filled out as though it were halfway full. He repeated the experiment three more times, as though not believing his eyes. He opened the bag and looked within and his eyes widened with amazement but then narrowed with fear. He retied the bag and tossed it back onto the bar, where it again filled out to look half-full.

  Piter was adding a few finishing touches to the ropes that bound D’Arbignal, who lay on the floor, trussed up good. D’Arbignal’s face was turning yellow and purple with bruises. He watched the proceedings without saying a word. Belle found his silence unnerving.

  “Keep an eye on him,” Piter instructed Fancy. “Make sure he don’t get free or hurt himself. We need him alive.” As an afterthought, he jerked a thumb at Belle. “Keep an eye on her, too,” he said with malice in his voice. “If she so much as looks at him funny, you let me know.”

  “Of course, Piter,” Fancy said. She draped an arm around him and kissed his cheek.

  “Good girl,” Piter said. He flashed a look that said see? to Belle. Her heart sunk. “Come on, gentlemen.”

  The men closed the door behind them, leaving Belle, Fancy, and D’Arbignal alone together. Belle looked out the sole window in the room, a translucent blur of old-style glass that looked out onto yet another dismal alley. Fancy sat at one of the chairs at the table and eyed D’Arbignal warily.

  “An awkward silence,” D’Arbignal observed, “is an affliction all people share. Men, women, rich, poor, ….” He chuckled and then added, “… royalty.”

  Belle had difficulty meeting his eyes or even looking at his beaten and bloody face. This was all her fault. He hadn’t been harming anybody. Sure, he drank too much and had been making a nuisance of himself …

  “So why haven’t you tried to kill me yet?” D’Arbignal asked Fancy as though inquiring about the weather.

  “Excuse me?” Fancy asked, incredulous. “What?”

  D’Arbign
al snorted. He struggled to make himself more comfortable but succeeded only in rocking himself back and forth like a rocking horse.

  “Why be so coy?” he said. “I know you’re one of the assassins who have been sent to kill me. With me tied up like this, you’d never get a better chance.”

  “What?” she said. “You’ve been hit in the head too much, mister.”

  “Fancy’s been in Shallou for weeks now,” Belle said. “She’s been turning tricks with me. I saw her. She’s no killer.”

  “If I was, I wouldn’t’ve let Piter get away with this love tap,” Fancy said, indicating the bruise on her face.

  “Oh, I’m not saying you’re their best man,” D’Arbignal said, “but you forget: I know the future.” He glanced at Belle and as an aside, said, “May I have a drink? My lips are parched.”

  “Fine, I’m an assassin,” Fancy said. She put her hands on her hips. “Fancy the teenaged prozzy assassin. You got me.”

  D’Arbignal said to Belle, “So about that drink …?”

  Belle saw that there was a pitcher resting on the small bar that ran along the far end of the room. She sighed and headed for it, thinking that if it happened to have any water in it, she could wet a towel or something with it and give it to D’Arbignal that way.

  “It’s just that I am the Greatest Swordsman in the World, and you are—sorry, but it’s true—just a girl. You’re not likely to get a better opportunity than this.”

  “If I were a killer,” Fancy said, “you’d have to be pretty stupid to keep taunting me like that.”

  “Nah,” D’Arbignal said, “I’m not worried about you. I’m immortal, remember?” He added, “Neither of you two is named Black, by any chance, are you? Or have some sort of title with ‘black’ in it?”

  Belle shook her head, which was stupid because there was no way D’Arbignal could see her all the way over here.

  “You see, I know the future,” D’Arbignal said, suddenly with no levity in his voice at all. “The girl told me I would die when I return to Bryanae. An unexpected corollary is that as long as I don’t go to Bryanae, I’m immortal.”

  “Bryanae,” Fancy said. “That’s the place on the wanted poster. Piter plans to take you there.”

  “Never will happen.”

  “How come you’re so sure?”

  “Because the girl told me that it would be the ‘black woman’ who’d bring me there.”

  Belle realized she was holding the pitcher, frozen, listening. She shook the pitcher gently, found it to be half-full with water. Perhaps stale water, but there was no way she’d go out into the main area with Piter and Werewolf. She shivered. Not a chance.

  “It’s an odd thing, knowing when and where you’re going to die,” he said, almost to himself. “You spend your whole life expecting death at any moment, welcoming it even … and then one day someone tells you that here is the day of your death and there is where your death shall occur. And you look ahead to all the years you might have had, but were never really yours, after all.

  “I’m not very young anymore, I suppose,” D’Arbignal said, “but nor am I old. I’ve failed to die spectacularly in the prime of my youth, yet neither will I marry or become a father. I’ve lived only for the sword, to be the best there ever was, but presumably, even that will fail me in Bryanae. Will I be remembered?” He sighed. “Perhaps by a few, but not often, and probably not for long, either. I started out by adopting a legend and yet that legend will outlive me.”

  Belle put the pitcher on the floor beside D’Arbignal. She looked for a towel, saw none, and then dunked her sleeve in the water. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  D’Arbignal smiled weakly, and his eyes were sad but kind. “Sipping from the sleeve of your dress will taste better than the finest of wines, I’m certain.”

  Belle wasn’t so certain, but it was all she had. She brought the dripping edge of her garment to his lips and he sipped slowly. She had a hard time reconciling this melancholy man with the daring extrovert who had drunkenly regaled the tavern with his tale of armies and vicious razor fish.

  D’Arbignal’s eyes flitted past Belle.

  “Ah,” he said. “You’ve decided to make a go of it at last, have you? I assure you, it won’t work.”

  Belle turned to see Fancy approaching, one deliberate foot in front of the other, as if she were in some kind of strange procession.

  Fancy lifted the hem of her yellow dress. Strapped to her thigh was a wicked-looking dagger.

  “Fancy?” Belle said, confused.

  “How did you know?” Fancy asked D’Arbignal as she unstrapped the dagger. “I thought I was perfect.”

  “And so you were,” he said. He squirmed a bit, more for comfort, it seemed, than from any hope of escape. “You can thank the girl for her punishment.”

  Fancy raised an eyebrow.

  “She didn’t just tell me my fortune,” D’Arbignal said, “she wanted me to spend the rest of my life afraid of my death. She wrapped every event inside of a riddle or lazy pun, hoping that I’d rack my brains trying to find the answers. Of course, it begs the question: if my fate is already sealed, would knowing what’s going to happen affect the outcome, one way or the other? Or perhaps knowing was always part of my future?”

  “What are you babbling about?” Fancy brought the dagger alongside D’Arbignal’s neck.

  “Fancy, no,” Belle said, but neither Fancy nor D’Arbignal responded to her.

  “The girl who told my future—I never learned her name—she joked that while it was the ‘black woman’ who’d lead me to my death, my ‘fancy’ would nearly be my undoing.”

  “What are you doing, Fancy?” Belle asked, feeling lightheaded. This bizarre charade couldn’t be real. She had to be dreaming. Fancy was just a girl, a prostitute like herself. She was no assassin. She was like a sister to her, a daughter.

  “Vizzen had no reason to think you’d come here,” Fancy said. “He only placed me in this town to hedge his bets. I’m only of the first scar. But now, I’ll make third scar, at least. Whoever wants you dead has paid well for it. The honor of the brotherhood is at stake. And it’s just me, ‘a little girl’, who will preserve it.”

  D’Arbignal shook his head sadly. “No, you won’t.”

  Fancy sliced a shallow groove along his throat. A thin rivulet of blood appeared like a vampire’s smile. “Say that again.”

  “Fancy, don’t,” Belle said. She realized she had raised the clay pitcher above her head.

  Fancy examined the fresh blood on the blade of her dagger. She didn’t smile. She didn’t lick the blade. She just … looked at it, and her expression was vacant.

  “The girl who told my future made it quite clear I wouldn’t die here,” D’Arbignal said, his smile rueful. “She said that my fancy would nearly be my undoing, but that the striking of the bell would save me.”

  Fancy froze a second then looked up at Belle as realization creeped in. Her eyes widened when she saw the raised pitcher.

  “Don’t,” Belle begged her.

  A flicker of a smile twitched at the corner of Fancy’s mouth and she lunged at D’Arbignal’s throat.

  Belle brought the pitcher down onto her head, shattering the clay pitcher into hundreds of fragments.

  For a moment, Fancy stood there, looking astonished. A river of blood began to stream from her hairline and down across her face. It dripped in a tiny rainfall onto the wood floor, sounding very loud in the room. Fancy started to raise the hand with the knife but even as she did, the knife dropped from pale fingers. She teetered on her feet. Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed.

  Belle felt a sob begin to well at the dregs of her soul. She felt it curl like a serpent around the memory of Will and their daughter Laurabelle together in bed. It nuzzled like a cat against the memory of Will’s lifeless body being dropped at her door, his throat cut end to end. It caressed the memory of every john who had shoved her roughly against a wall and used her like a waste basket for his
seed.

  She felt this sob in her chest but she bit down on her hand, hard, silencing it. She’d made it this far in her blighted life without being a victim. She wasn’t going to start being one now.

  Belle retrieved the dagger from Fancy’s lifeless hand, feeling numb and far, far away from herself. She watched her hand from that great distance as she began to cut D’Arbignal free from his bonds. After she had cut the rope in a few places, he began to worm his way out.

  At first, he could barely stay on his feet. Between the beating he had received and being tied up as he had, it was a wonder he could stand at all.

  He looked down at Fancy’s body and grimaced. “The old me probably would have said something clever about this.” He sighed. “The old me had an eternity of life ahead of him.”

  Belle indicated the window but D’Arbignal shook his head.

  “The gentlemen in the other room owe me a few items.” He stared intently at her. “I owe them a little something, as well.”

  12

  D’Arbignal lifted the poker from beside the fireplace and tested its weight. It was an absurd image: so absurd, in fact, that Belle offered the dagger to him. He shook his head.

  “This will suffice,” he said, trying an experimental thrust with it.

  His body moved with unconscious grace. It was in its own way a thing of beauty. Absurd, yes, but also beautiful.

  He headed for the door but Belle stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He winced and she quickly removed her hand.

  “When you go …?” she started. He didn’t say anything, so she added, “… can you take me with you?”

  He hesitated, and in that hesitation, Belle saw a life of ruin and emptiness: an aging whore in a dingy city, alone, and unloved. No husband, no daughter … not even Fancy or Piter, such as they were.