Chapter 21
Chain stayed at the Pyre longer than anyone: the people of Buckle, mostly the victims' families, had questions about the Uprising and she could not deny them answers whilst Heretical corpses rotted in Doctor Marsh's home. She had to fight fatigue and pain, telling herself people needed closure and to see that their Contegon had survived a fight with the Disciples. That thought got her through the day.
She had been speaking for about an hour when City, Tissue's husband, came to her and said, “I reckon most people here think you're going to leave after this.”
“What makes you think that?” Chain asked, hoping she had no guilt in her voice.
“Besides the look on your face?” he said, not unkindly. “Well, people think you'll be called to Aureu to talk about what you faced here. Can’t imagine the Council won’t summon you, sire. And, if somewhere as wonderful as Buckle has been compromised, then other worse places surely have been?”
No one wanted to believe that their town, their community, was inherently evil or gullible. A few people had sniffed the conversation and were looking at them with interest.
Chain coughed. “You're right: I expect to be called to Aureu, and I expect other towns will face, or are facing, the same problems we have.”
People didn’t relax, but a tension did disperse then. Sadness replaced it as her wards realised this might be the last time they saw Chain. So much was changing, so much that had been fundamental to their daily lives, that mourning those who had departed shifted to mourning the loss of their Contegon. Those who'd already talked about the victims came back, offered their regards and thanks for all she'd done.
The Pyre became one for Chain's life in Buckle as well as the departed.
Art drove her home, having offered to drive her around until she was healed. The exertion of standing, projecting her voice, even of talking, had been great: her arm ached where it wasn't, itching and pulsing, and her side had screaming at her. It was all she could do just to climb onto his lavish seating.
“I'll go slowly,” Art said.
“You don't need to make such an effort for me,” Chain breathed.
The Merchant shook his head. “If you could see yourself, you wouldn't argue with me.”
Chain didn't say anything more, just let the Merchant drive through Buckle. She took the town in under Lun's horrid light: the recent buildings; the old roads; the places she had inspected; and the families she had visited. Looking up at the Family, she saw Father and Mother reaching up to the dark brother, though she couldn't determine whether it was in anger or in pleading.
Art soon got to her home. Not that it would be her home for much longer. Jumping down from the driving box, he jogged over to open the carriage door. “Do you need help to get inside?” he asked.
Through a dry mouth, Chain whispered, “No, I will be fine, thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
“There is a fine line, Merchant Art, between caring for a Contegon and not trusting her,” Chain said. “It's bad enough that I'm crippled: please don't treat me like my mind was damaged too!”
Art drew a breath in. “This has been harder on you than anyone knows, hasn't it?”
She only nodded.
With his help, Chain stepped towards the door, her feet heavy. Art watched her closely. Not wanting to lose her temper again, she stopped, her hand on her hip. The Merchant got the message. He waved as he rode off, his horse's footsteps echoing between the streets.
Chain stumbled inside. With some effort, she locked her front door. Her body demanded reparations for the horrors inflicted on it, not satisfied with draining her and filing her nerves to shredding needles. Now she was in the safety and privacy of her home, she shuffled to the couch to fall asleep. Perhaps she'd move to her bed if she woke during the night, but only perhaps.
She made it only halfway to the couch before a scream came from upstairs, a little girl's scream.
“Carmen!” Chain shouted. She burst into a run, her fatigue forgotten.
“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t! Mum!” Carmen shrieked.
Her child, her baby, was terrified. Either way, Chain's raced up the stairs. “It's okay, Carmen. I'm coming.”
There was a tremendous crash accompanied by another piercing scream. Chain's heart hammered, magnifying her wounds' complaints. Her blood was so loud in her ears that she barely heard her own screams. “Carmen! Carmen!”
The crash came from the study, the only room in the first floor that wasn't a bedroom. Chain crested the stairs, sweating, barely able to breathe, and stumbled on after her daughter, still shouting Carmen’s name.
Carmen must have heard her because she came sprinting out. Her face was a mask of tears. She ran okay, but her night clothes were covered in blood. Carmen ran into her arm, jumping at her, overwhelmed by sadness or pain.
“Oh Sol, Carmen, are you okay? Are you okay?!”
Carmen nodded, sniffling and weeping into Chain’s shoulder.
“What happened? What happened, honey?” A thought struck Chain. “Where's Bracket?”
Carmen sobbed louder.
“Carmen? Please, talk to me. Where is Bracket?” She couldn't make out Carmen's first response. “Please speak clearly. Tell me slowly.”
“The study. Mum, she's... she's dead, Mum! Bracket's dead!”
Chain held her daughter away, knelt down to her level. Her battlemind kicked in as possible scenarios played through her mind. “Carmen, you need to be very clear. What exactly happened?”
“I wasn't sleepy. I asked Bracket...” She sniffed, great wads of snot migrating around her sinuses. “I asked for a story. Bracket read me one. But, as she was reading, a big spider came...”
Chain didn't wait for anything more: drawing her axe, she hobbled to the study. Inside, there was a faint clicking and whirring. It didn't sound like the other Disciple had: the clicking was more frequent, and was accompanied by a faint sizzling.
She opened the door with her axe and found Bracket in the large reading chair, blood seeping from what remained of her neck. One of the bookshelves was on the floor, its books scattered around it, many of them broken by the fall. And on the floor, crawling toward her slowly, was a seriously wounded Disciple, the tips of its distended limbs covered in Bracket's blood.
Chain roared and brought her axe down on the dying Disciple. Its wound had seriously weakened it, so her axe cut it in two. It hissed, whirred, but died. She helped it on its way back to Lun by stamping on the bastard thing, roaring and swearing as she did, losing herself to her rage. Stamping and stamping, until some of its smaller parts were lodged in her boots.
Some sense returned when she felt something trickling down her side. She checked her robes and found that crushing the Disciple had broken open her wound. She dropped her axe, held her hand to her side, and fought her tears.
“Mum! Mum! Are you okay?” Carmen shouted, still terrified.
“I'm fine. The Disciple is dead. The Disciple is dead.”
Small footsteps sounded behind her, and then Carmen hugged her leg.
Chain dropped her axe and turned to her daughter. As she pulled up her robes, checked for wounds, she asked, “Carmen, this is important: did the Disciple scratch you? Did it touch you?”
Carmen shook her head. “It didn't,” she said, still crying.
“Are you sure? This is so, so important. Are you sure?”
Her daughter nodded. “Bracket held it as I ran. Then the Mister told me to push the bookcase on it. To hurt it to save myself. I didn’t want to hurt anything, Mum. But I did.” She looked sheepish then. “I'm not in trouble for that, am I?”
Chain smiled a little, in spite of the death of her wonderful friend, and kissed her daughter on the head. “You're not in trouble, no, not at all. You did wonderfully well.”
“Why did this happen, Mum? Why?”
That smile died. The smell of blood became so strong that it seemed to surround her, like a mist.
“Mum? Mum?”
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She wished she had the right words, a response, for her daughter, but she didn't. She couldn't say anything, only stand there, surrounded by blood.
Carmen seemed to understand somehow and gripped Chain fiercely. She wanted to assure her daughter that this had happened for a good reason, that Sol had a plan, but she could not say. Not when Bracket's corpse was cooling in her study, when blood still leaked from her dead form.
Chain just couldn’t believe the final Disciple spider had exacted revenge in the worst way possible. She couldn’t parse it through her faith. No, she realised, the revenge could have been worse as Carmen was still alive. It was amazing: somehow, she'd had the presence of mind to slam that bookcase down onto the Disciple. Under her anger, under her despair, under a slight hatred for her god, Chain found some pride and wonder for her daughter's survival.
She found Sol’s hand in this tragedy.
“I love you, Carmen,” Chain said, perhaps more fiercely than she meant.
“I... love you too, Mum.”
Chain separated her daughter from her leg and limped over to Bracket. She reached up with her pale, shivering hand and closed her friend's eyes. There would be no trip to Aureu with her, no working together to uncover the Heretics who somehow knew their secret cypher.
“I love you, Bracket. I am so sorry this happened to you.”
Chain gripped her hand into a fist. Someone did this to Bracket, and they had nearly killed Carmen too. They had nearly killed Carmen. Her hand shook, and the world seemed to shake along with it. Any and all Heretics would feel her wrath; they would burn; they would be destroyed. Sol willed this but, more so, Chain willed it with everything that she was. The investigation into Buckle would have to remain in another’s hands but, by Sol, those in Aureu would suffer.
“Goodbye, Bracket,” Carmen whispered.
“Yes,” Chain said as she slowly released her hand. “Goodbye, Bracket. You will not have died for nothing. Sol will avenge you. I will avenge you.”
Slant
“The First Servant was Sol's only mistake.”
--Lord Fray in the foreword for his 'Revision of the Sol Lexic.'