Carnival of Souls

CHAPTER 9

KALEB WATCHED THROUGH HOODED eyes as Zevi heated the needle in the candle flame. The amount of blood he’d lost this time was alarming enough that he wasn’t sure if this was going to be the end of his fighting or not. A tiny but very real part of him hoped it was. He wanted to rest, even if resting meant slipping into unconsciousness. The other, more insistent part of him could only focus on how few competitors were left. To be so close and lose seemed wrong.

“Stay awake.” Zevi didn’t bother to clean the knife blade — or heat it — before he cut away the remains of Kaleb’s torn trousers. He wasn’t rough, but he wasn’t wasting time on unnecessary steps either.

“Am.” Kaleb’s eyes fluttered shut again — until Zevi poured a bucket of saltwater over the bloodied gashes in his thigh. The water was clean; Zevi was always prepared with clean water when Kaleb fought. It wasn’t freezing, but it stung.

“He tried for an artery. Smart move.” The hands on Kaleb’s leg were as gentle as possible, but that didn’t make them painless. “Keeping the claws in here was wise.” Zevi poked around the wound, digging out the claws that had been left behind.

Kaleb blacked out again, but he came to a few moments later when Zevi stabbed the needle into his leg. Thankfully, he’d missed the second dousing with saltwater. Zevi was thorough, and finding foreign objects in the wound always meant saltwater washes. It was wise, but it still hurt like hell.

Not that stitches are fun.

The hot metal jabbing into his skin burned, and the feel of thread being forced through the tiny hole in his leg felt alien, but Zevi was good at stitching evenly and quickly. It was a rhythmic pain — piercing, tugging, piercing, tugging, pushing flesh together, piercing, tugging — as the stitches closed the gash.

“He missed the artery.”

“Good.” Kaleb looked up.

Zevi knelt over Kaleb’s bloody, wet leg. He had one knee on either side of Kaleb’s leg, and he squeezed tightly. “Not enough,” Zevi muttered. “Can you push here?”

“Where?”

Zevi positioned Kaleb’s hands on his torn leg. “Like this. Just hold the skin together.”

Mutely, Kaleb did as he was told.

“Better.” Zevi stabbed the needle into the flesh again and again. He finished sewing the tear closed without another word. When he was done, he left the needle and remaining thread lying on Kaleb’s bruised leg.

“Hate this part.”

“I know.” Zevi’s voice held no sympathy, though. Sympathy was reserved for the truly dreadful in his world. This wasn’t the worst injury Zevi had tended. It wasn’t the worst either of them had recovered from either.

The cave was silent for a moment as Zevi walked to the bucket that hung over the fire. Kaleb turned his head to watch. He’d experimented with the idea that not seeing it coming was better, but for him, at least, the shock was worse.

Methodically Zevi wrapped his hand in a faded but clean cloth; he reached out and gripped one of the handles that stuck out of the bucket and withdrew a knife that had been heating in the saltwater over the fire.

The instinct to run wasn’t as easy to ignore as it had been the first time. Then, Kaleb hadn’t known how much this part would hurt. Now, he’d had plenty of experience with it; he knew cauterization was worse than stabbing. That first injury happened quickly, and for the first few moments, the shock kept the pain at bay. Sometimes, if Kaleb was fight high, the pain didn’t hit him for a few minutes. This pain, however, was on top of the injury; this pain was without the rush of a fight.

Kaleb swallowed. Every muscle tightened in anticipation. Then, Zevi pressed the blade to the skin he’d just stitched.

The sizzle and the stench of burning skin added to the already awful feeling, and Kaleb turned his head to the side and vomited.

HE WASN’T SURE HOW long he’d lain on the floor after Zevi had cauterized the incision. Heat and salt worked on most of the toxins that could be left behind in a fight. The few extra-magical ones that made their way into The City were countered by steel or silver. Kaleb and Zevi had bought or acquired enough blades that had both metals in them that Zevi usually had a reasonably sized blade for most injuries. Occasionally, he’d had to resort to multiple cauterizing blades, but thankfully that was not the norm.

“Drink.” Zevi handed him a mug of something.

Kaleb sniffed it.

Zevi snorted. “I’m not going to drug you after I just sewed you up. If I wanted to knock you out, I’d have let you bleed out or skipped burning you.”

“Sorry. Reflex.” Kaleb propped himself up, lifted the mug to his lips, and drank the contents. It was far from tasty, but whatever noxious plants Zevi had brewed were mixed with halfway-decent whiskey instead of the home brew he usually used. From the taste of it, these were plants not found for sale at the Carnival of Souls — at least not without far more coin than they had. Kaleb had been nursed back to health often enough in his seventeen years that he’d learned which medicines were rarer than others.

Kaleb looked at Zevi as he handed the mug back. “I’d have been dead years ago without you, but that doesn’t mean that I want you going into the Untamed Lands without me.”

“I thought the whiskey might cover the taste.” Zevi shrugged unapologetically.

“It didn’t.”

Neither of them liked to mention the years Zevi had spent in the Untamed Lands outside The City. Out there, witch magic had made nature grow so rapidly that the pockets of daimons who lived beyond the safety of the overcrowded city were not so far removed from animals. The City might seem barbaric, but there were entertainments, pleasures to be bought and sold, and reasonably safe streets. Admittedly, safe was a relative concept, but on the occasions when Kaleb had needed to leave The City briefly with Zevi, he had been disturbed by how primitive life was in the wilds.

“I needed things. You were busy,” Zevi pointed out in that absurdly factual way of his.

Kaleb debated starting the old argument about Zevi traveling outside The City, but knew the other part that they didn’t discuss: Zevi had lived there for years. He was more comfortable there than Kaleb ever could be. He was quick enough to avoid predators, and out there, he could let himself be that quick without attracting attention. The problem was Kaleb’s, not Zevi’s. His instinct to keep Zevi safe at any cost was the inevitable result of being in charge of their little pack of two. Zevi was his packmate, his responsibility, his only family. That’s what pack was, and losing Zevi would destroy Kaleb. None of that was stuff he knew how to say — or even needed to. All he said was, “You could’ve told me.”

“Could’ve. Didn’t. We’re both fine, so what’s it matter?”

Kaleb growled.

“I won’t let you down, Kaleb. Not ever.” Zevi stood there for an awkward moment. Then he said, “It’s not all selfless, you know. I’d be dead if I wasn’t under your protection. The City still confuses me sometimes.”

Kaleb sighed as he lay back on the floor. “And you’d be less of a target without my being in this competition.”

“True.” Zevi frowned. “The prize is worth it. You said so. You’ll win. Then everything will be better… unless you die. Flynn and Aya are both good enough to kill you at your best. Maybe Sol. And right now, even bad fighters could kill you.”

The beauty of Zevi’s honesty was that there was never any guessing as to his thoughts on anything, but there were times that his bluntness was less than encouraging. His doubts were as freely verbalized as his hopes. Sol was likely to kill Kaleb, especially in the shape Kaleb was in now. Flynn was the fighter likely to win the entire competition. Aya wasn’t as good a fighter as Sol or Flynn, but she’d had the strength to stand against the untrained, the strategy to defeat the cagiest of the contestants, and the ruthlessness to resort to means that were as unsportsmanlike as a daimon could get. She had more total kills than anyone left in the running.

Except me.

His, however, were mostly from years of fighting and from wearing the black mask. Very few of those kills were ones that anyone knew about. There were rumors, murmurs crediting a few particular kills to him. Rumors were useful tools in establishing a reputation. Most of the stories were the ones he’d allowed to leak. His true kill count was known only to him.

Kaleb forced himself to sit upright and offered the only reassurance he could speak with reasonable honesty. “I’m not going to lose to Aya.”

“Maybe not in a ring,” Zevi muttered as he walked away. He said nothing more as he gathered his needles and knife and dropped them into his postsurgery water basin. He remained silent as he collected the remains of Kaleb’s ruined trousers and several bits of cloth that were on the floor beside Kaleb. He dropped them into another, much larger bucket.

Kaleb waited as Zevi paced and put away everything that he could possibly put away. Zevi always liked to keep things orderly, but when he was stressed he was obsessive about tidying up. Right now, he was about as stressed as he got.

“She’s not like us,” Zevi blurted. His hands moved like a conjurer creating a storm as he ranted. “You only fight or kill for a reason. She doesn’t need to, but she does. If you’re going to have to fight and kill without contract or competition, we should just go home.”

The younger cur ducked his head when he realized what he’d said. It had been seven years since Kaleb had found Zevi in the Untamed Lands and brought him to The City, but that place was still “home” to Zevi. It wasn’t, had never been, Kaleb’s home. Sometimes, Kaleb thought that what he feared most about the Untamed Lands was that it would take Zevi from him. Before Zevi, he hadn’t been afraid of the overgrown wilderness that encroached on The City, but being a cur meant needing to find and form a pack. Kaleb had only ever found one cur who felt like home to him — and in that way that he now knew as uniquely Zevi’s, the cur in question understood their bond long before he did. Zevi didn’t question what was obvious to him. When Zevi found and tended to the then-wounded Kaleb, he knew that they were to be connected. Kaleb had taken longer to figure it out, but now that he had a pack, the terror of losing Zevi was what woke him at night. Winning the competition meant Kaleb could protect Zevi — and find other curs who fit with their small family.

“It’s okay,” Kaleb reassured him. “Everything will be okay.”

He was too injured to get up and follow Zevi. He waited for several minutes until Zevi paused, and then he said, “Zevi? Be still. Z?”

Zevi looked at him, and Kaleb asked, “What’s really wrong?”

“Aside from you’re hurt again?”

“Yes,” Kaleb said as patiently as he was able.

Zevi came and sat on the ground beside him. “I don’t understand her. I don’t trust Aya. What if she just kills us?”

Calmly, Kaleb told him, “There’s no reason for her to kill you.”

“There was no reason for her to kill Verie either,” Zevi muttered.

And there it was: Verie had been one of Zevi’s friends. The truth was that Kaleb wasn’t convinced Aya had made the kill. He’d listened to what she had and very carefully had not said on Judgment Day. Of course, he also understood that Aya did have a reason to attack Zevi. His packmate’s injury or death would affect his ability to fight, and Aya was devious enough to know that. She took advantage of opportunities. It was why she was a likely candidate to win — and why he was all but certain that she hadn’t actually killed Verie and that Verie hadn’t illegally aided anyone. Aya was merely taking advantage of the situation. He’d watched her throughout the whole competition. She was practical, but not unnecessarily violent.

She looked like she was everything that Marchosias respected. If she weren’t female, Marchosias would have offered her a choice position in the government, but no female had held such positions during Marchosias’ reign. Aya would be the first, but only if she won. If she lost, she’d still have a cossetted place in the palace. Marchosias had very clear taste in breeding: admirable traits or good alliances. Aya’s family was among the highest in the ruling caste, and she had demonstrated superior skill as a fighter.

Kaleb put a hand on Zevi’s forearm. “I have no intention of letting Aya or anyone else stand between me and the future we deserve. I’ll take care of us, Z. I promise.”