They didn’t have to wait long before a guardsman came trundling out of the corridor leading to the front of the jail. With red and purple blotches on his face, it looked like the man had taken a beating as bad as Ida’s, at least as first glance. When he came to stand before Vidar’s cell, searching for the right key on a ring with over twenty of them, he saw it was some sort of skin condition. This guard smelled almost as bad as the drunks.
“You’re to see the magistrate,” the guard grumbled.
Vidar readied himself but gave no reply.
“I’d love me a reason for clubbing you, you hear?” He touched the wooden pole hanging from his belt.
When the right key finally made the lock click and the guardsman opened the cell door, Vidar acted. The kenaz rune flashed after he brought his palm close to the guard’s face. The guardsman cried out and dropped the keys, kicking them away as he stumbled.
Ida squeaked in excitement.
Vidar dove for the ring of keys and grabbed it. Unfortunately, the guard anticipated his move despite being robbed of his vision. A terribly strong grip closed around Vidar’s upper arm, and the two of them tumbled to the floor.
“Get off me!” Vidar hissed.
“I’ll have your guts for ornaments, ye bastard!” the guard shouted.
Vidar was much too small and light to have any sort of chance wrestling against this guard on the floor, but he thankfully managed to land on top, his knee heavy on the guard’s chest.
“Oof!”
Vidar half stood, then fell again, his arm still firmly in the guard’s grasp. This time, he angled himself so that same knee landed right in the guard’s face. A loud crunch and then a snap was the result, and the guard’s nose began pouring blood all over himself.
“Let me go!”
“You’re dead, little boy. I don’t care what they say!” the guard barked, slowly getting the upper hand despite his injuries.
Vidar fell on his back and the guard crawled over his legs before sitting up in a half-crouch, his entire body over Vidar’s. A blow came down, driving the air from Vidar’s chest. Then another thudding into his face.
Ida shouted something, but Vidar’s ears were ringing, blocking everything out.
“Get off me,” he mumbled, barely registering the third blow, this one to his temple.
Two huge hands wrapped themselves around Vidar’s neck and a crushing pressure built immediately, cutting off the air so he couldn’t even cough.
“Get off me,” Vidar repeated, but it came out as a muted, saliva-filled hiss.
Kicking his legs against the bare floor did nothing, and his vision was getting dim, life draining out of him. With thoughts flowing as through thick syrup, he lifted both hands to try to push the guard off, knowing it would do no good. Darkness came, but in that darkness he saw two circles. The runes. His hands. One was spent. It would give no more light. The other, though, that one was brimming with essence, surging with life.
Vidar triggered the stakra rune almost without conscious thought, opening the circle wide. A loud thump sounded, followed immediately by his arm being violently pushed back. The pressure around his throat disappeared. Vision returned with his panting, choked breath. He coughed and coughed, drawing in that sweet air.
“Vidar!” Ida shouted, but he barely registered her voice.
Turning to all fours, Vidar hurled, spraying the unmoving guardsman with the contents of his stomach.
Why wasn’t the man moving?
Vidar wiped his chin with the sleeve of his coat, then focused to clear his racing mind as he stood on trembling legs. A hole. There was a hole in the middle of the guardsman’s chest. It was roughly circular, with torn apart flesh lining the entrance. Blood poured out of it, but Vidar still saw the man’s insides.
Dumbly, he raised his palm to look at the thrust rune, then back to the corpse. Vidar swallowed hard, eyes watering.
“Vidar!”
He’d killed the guard. Numb. He felt numb. The lines making up the rune in the palm of his hand were ruined now, but it’d worked. Worked too well. Vidar was a killer now. He’d killed a guardsman. They’d never let him get away with that. He’d never?—
Vidar bent over at the waist and vomited all over the corpse again, letting out a low, moaning wail as the ramifications of what he’d done came at him like a punch in the stomach.
“Vidar!”
“What?” he barked, looking up.
“The keys!” Ida cried. “We have to get out of here, you stupid bastard, or they’ll hang you for this!”
He blinked several times, then shook his head and placed his hands on his knees to push himself up to standing. “Keys,” he mumbled, looking around the floor. A small mound of flesh and blood rested a short distance from the corpse.
“In the door!”
Right. The door. He turned back to the door leading into his own cell. The key was still in there, the rest of them hanging from the ring. Walking over, he pulled the key out and headed over to Ida.
She snatched the ring from his hand. “Let me, I’ll be faster!”
He didn’t protest as she reached out through the gap between bars and inserted the first key, swearing when it wouldn’t turn. Ida’s fingers worked in a blur of deft dexterity despite her many injuries, and she didn’t have any problem fitting keys into the slot.
Vidar did his best to ignore the remains on the ground. The room spun around him and he thought he might vomit again, when he caught sight of one of the drunks. He was pressed against the one stone wall in his cell, as far away from Vidar as he could possibly get, eyes wide with fright. The drunk flinched when Vidar’s attention fell on him. Fear. He’d scared the drunks with his abilities. He didn’t know what to think of the fear in the man’s eyes. Should he be proud? No. Not that. Never that.
“There!” Ida shouted, forgetting to keep her voice low in the excitement after hearing the key click. She stepped out of the cell, gave Vidar a quick hug, then bent down and stole the guardsman’s cudgel.
“You shouldn’t steal,” Vidar mumbled, eyes looking down at his own feet. Specks of pink dotted his leather boots.
“Shut up,” Ida said. “We’re looking to survive this.”
She pulled on his coat, then stopped dead in her tracks. “Shit.”
Vidar looked up to see two new arrivals. Guardsmen. Two of them. They were big men. Together, they filled up the entire width of the corridor. Vidar and Ida would not be able to slink past.
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“What in the king’s fury happened here?” the guardsman to the left said, drawing a blade from his waist. Reflected light from the flickering flames danced along the edge. No cudgel this time. A swing from that thing would mean the end of them.
Vidar’s eyes were drawn to the other man, however. His face was stark white and his eyes were full of recognition.
“Ren?”
It was the big, burly bookseller whose shop he’d stumbled into. The one who introduced him to Yallander.
“You have to help us, Ren,” Vidar said, straightening.
The other guardsman gave Ren an incredulous look. “You know this runt, recruit? This murderer?”
Vidar winced at the harsh words but powered through.
“Ren. What would Yallander say if he learned you had the chance to help me but refused? Who’ll teach the guild?”
At the mention of Yallander, the other guard’s eyes grew big and round, his mouth opening wide. “Yallander? You’re an infiltrator!”
He turned as if to shout back the way he’d come, but he never got a single word out. Ren spun, turning his hips to add weight to a swing, cracking his fist against the guardsman’s neck, breaking something in there. The man crumpled to the floor and Ren drove his heel down against the neck in the same place, producing another loud crunch.
Ren stepped over him and into the chamber with the cells, holding out his hand.
“Keys.”
Ida handed them over.
“Follow me.”
The two of them followed Ren back the way he’d just come. It didn’t take long to reach a door at the other end of a bare corridor. Passing through it, they came upon a bored-looking old clerk behind a desk. Other than him, the place was empty. At the other end of that room, Vidar saw the exit. He’d never been so excited to see the snowy ground before. The air was filled with pinkish hues. The sun was setting. He must’ve been passed out far longer than he’d thought.
“What’re ye doin’ with two prisoners?” the clerk asked, his voice nasal and whiny, like a sullen child’s.
Ren drew his cudgel.
Vidar flinched back from the strike and averted his eyes as blood poured from the clerk’s face and onto the open book he’d been writing in.
“Your services to the guild are valuable,” Ren said, his voice conversational like he hadn’t just killed two men in cold blood, one of them defenseless. “But don’t think this won’t have consequences.”
Ida answered in a low, monotone voice, “What of the drunks?”
“I’ll deal with the other prisoners.”
There wasn’t a doubt in Vidar’s mind what would happen to those still trapped back there.
“What about you?” Ida asked.
“I’ll bash my head in a little, make it look right. Now get the hell out of here!”
Vidar and Ida hurried out into the cold and crossed the wide square to disappear among the houses. At that late hour, fewer people milled about, but Vidar felt their stares. Ida’s appearance made a few people gasp and pull away, and he probably didn’t strike a particularly dashing figure either after those blows to his head.
Hurried steps along the wall soon placed them in front of the closest gates. It was still open and the two guards stationed there did not appear alarmed. They didn’t know. Vidar told himself they didn’t know as the two of them shuffled among the crowd of workers leaving for the day, heading home in the poorer districts. He heard mutters of undrinkable water and people spoke of melting snow for something to drink. It barely registered. Vidar was too on edge, nervously glancing this way and that.
Even there, their appearances drew glances, but no one commented. People kept to themselves. It wasn’t anyone’s business.
The two guards did not see them huddling in the dense crowd. By the time Vidar and Ida passed through the gate and across the small bridge of wood, a bell began to toll in the distance.
“Stop!” someone yelled. It was one of the guards.
Vidar looked over his shoulder as Ida pulled him farther away. It was one of the guards holding up a hand to stop those behind before they exited.
“You all hear the bell! We’re closing the gate until we hear from the captain!”
People groaned and complained, throwing longing glances at Vidar and the others who’d made it through.
“That was close,” Ida said.
“Too close.”
The exhilaration of escape did not last long. Once they were out of sight from the wall, a crushing guilt made his hands tremble. “So many dead.”
“Try not to think about it,” Ida said, still pulling him by the hand.
“How can I not think about it?”
“Just don’t,” Ida said, stopping to turn and face him. “Haven’t you seen dead people before?”
“I’ve never killed anyone myself.”
Her good eye was searching, looking up at him, like she couldn’t quite understand what he was getting at. “You’re still new. It gets easier.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “You’ve taken someone’s life?”
Ida gave a sharp nod. “Once. Self-defense. He would probably have ended my life once he was…” She paused. “Finished. It was him or me. I chose me.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t let these things get to you. Your life didn’t matter to them. We do what we need to survive.”
“How old are you again?” Vidar asked, trying, and failing, to make his mouth form a joking smile. Strangely, hearing those callous words from this young girl did make him feel a little better.
“You grow up fast in Rat Town.”
She gave a small smile, then winced, as if moving her face pained her. “Come, I need to go to a place where I can get my eye looked at.”
“We should return to my room first. I lost my silver, remember? Siv is holed up in there. She must be worried out of her mind.”
She pulled on his coat again and set them both in motion. “It’s on the way. It’ll be quick, promise.”
They arrived at what looked like any other house at the edge of Andersburg, except a larger wooden structure was built right next to it, almost like a barn.
“What is this place?” he asked as Ida banged on the door.
“Veterinarian.”
He guffawed, then narrowed his eyes. “You’re not serious? An animal doctor?”
“Animals. People. We’re not so different. Besides, this bastard owes me one.”
The door opened, and a figure appeared, wearing a white apron absolutely splattered with blood and gore. A pair of large hands with black hair on the knuckles clutched an equally messy cloth.
Bald but with a huge, bushy brown mustache, this man leered down at Ida. “Little thief. You look unwell.”
Ida pointed at her face. “It’s my eye. I need your help, you ugly bastard.”
“A favor is usually asked with a little more sugar than that,” he said, licking his lower lip. He turned his head to glare at Vidar. “Who’s this, then? A boyfriend? You don’t look so well either, boy.”
“Why don’t you wait outside, Vidar? I’ll be right out, I’m sure,” Ida said, pushing past the man and entering the house.
“Yes, Vidar. Why don’t you wait outside?” the man sneered down at him before turning around and shutting the door behind him, leaving Vidar alone out in the cold.
What felt like an eternity later, he heard Ida cry out in pain. A long, tear-filled wail that ended in choking and what he thought was vomiting. It was difficult to say despite having his ear pressed against the door. The silence that followed made it crawl beneath his skin with indecision. It sounded like she was being attacked in there. Vidar shifted his weight from foot to foot, thinking of all the ways an animal doctor might make a mistake and only worsen her already grievous injuries.
By the time he’d made the decision to enter, the door opened. He stumbled back from the surprise but was glad to see Ida emerge. At first glance, she appeared no less worse for wear than before. A bandage of sorts encircled her head with padding under it by her right eye, the broken one. Blood trickled from beneath it and the bandage was already stained.
Ida adjusted her tunic after opening the door and closed her coat while she descended the steps down to stand before him.
“What happened? I heard you shouting in there.”
She drew long, heavy breaths, faster and faster until she finally spoke in a steely voice that began trembling almost immediately. “He couldn’t do anything about the eye. It had to be removed, and I couldn’t convince him to give me something for the pain.”
Ida’s entire being trembled, and he reached out to embrace her, but she pushed him away. “Don’t touch me!”
Then she began to weep, turning around in a small circle, round and round, like she didn’t know what to do with herself. Like she was stuck. “Please. I have to see Siv.”
“I’ll take you to her.”
By the time they set their steps toward Vidar’s room, darkness had swallowed Andersburg. Ida’s tears eventually dried up, and after that they walked in silence.
People walked about, minding their own business, heading home after a long day of work or to the many establishments offering beer on the cheap or spirits to those with a little more coin to spare. Vidar took it all in, breathing deep despite the cold. Even without warmth runes hidden about his person, he barely registered the cold. It actually felt sort of nice against the wounds on his face. Shouts and raucous laughter spilled out of briefly opened doors, along with the light from within houses. People defied the cold and, to him, it seemed a celebration of life itself. They’d made it out, and, for the moment, he was able to suppress the black memories of death.
Even Ida looked to be doing a little better, even whistling a chirping tune, as they neared the part of Rat Town where Edna surely waited for him with another scolding. Siv would be so relieved to find he’d accomplished the task of saving her sister. The lost runes could always be replaced and more money made. All that mattered was that they were alive and no longer caged like animals.
A ponderous flap of something enormous far above their heads made the two of them stop.
They looked up into the sky and saw it.
