PULL ME UNDER - Pleasure To Kill - Twenty-Seven
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Twenty-Seven
White tarpaulin broke Tanner’s fall, the wood supports cracking and snapping until the thud of the ground knocked the wind out of him. The guard landed next to him, though with the tent already limp and broken, the guard’s fall was much harder, a split beam jutting through his leg. He bled silently into the cloth.
Footsteps and hollers, his head too jostled to make sense of the noise. Everything was muffled, indistinguishable voices. Firm hands hauled him up to sit.
“It’s Tanner,” a voice said from behind. “Find Lauren!”
It was morning, the masked faces all silhouetted over yellows and pinks and blues.
“Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you. Who’s talking?”
“It’s Ddun. Are you hurt?”
“Are you real?”
“Of course I’m real, I’m holding you up.”
“Of course you’re real.” Then it all sloshed in and out of darkness, a glide of cold metal on his arms, his hands tingled painfully, and someone was shouting. Carried and set beside a fire, the smell of fried food hit him, a clay cup on his lips. Water, plain water. He took it and drank so deep he couldn’t breathe, able to sit on his own with the alertness that came with the cold down is throat. He shivered, the sensations in his body slowly becoming more tangible. Nothing was broken, except maybe his head.
“Oh my God, Tanner!” Lauren dove into him, arms tight around his shoulders. “I thought I felt something, my God, I’m glad it’s you, you piece of shit.” He returned the hug, knowing she had to be real if he could feel tears on his neck. Her hand went to the back of his head and paused there, to feel at the hair clipped short. She pulled back, her face lit orange by the fire and pink by the sky, brow furrowed. “She cut your hair!”
“Split ends, I was due for a trim.”
“She cut your hair…”
***
Being the only one to see the inside of Kisku had Tanner the centre of attention, his arrival invited an impromptu meeting of all the appointed leaders to hear him speak—once his head cleared enough to do so. With Ddun’s tent smashed, they held it outdoors, brisk wind and all. Borga began by reminding everyone, if they saw a strange sight, it was nothing, and to shut up while Tanner spoke—but Tanner was also seeing it, little shadows weaving around all the men who sat on their mats with backs straight and arms at their knees. Occasionally a man would snap his head in surprise at something no one else could see, but they were on the whole a well-disciplined bunch. In this weather, it was even more apparent that he lacked the nice protective layer of his long hair, or his beard, his smooth cheeks scalded by the wind.
“You’ve been travelling along the leyline that runs between the castles. Magic is strongest here. Continuing this way, you’ll stay vulnerable to her, so it’s better to go a different route until you can’t help it anymore. Kisku is on an intersection of leylines, just as Kaddusk is, and the sacred forests, those are the only places she named. Uhm, what else? Without the strength, or energy, or whatever-it-is within the land to help her—and in Kisku, she’s got it—but she still needs to pull from me, or Lauren, with neither of us there it’s just this,” he poked his finger into the frozen grass just beyond his mat. “The army must reroute, or you’ll be fighting more than just a giant. East or west, it makes no difference, but we can’t stay the course.”
“What else did you see while you were there? How many men has Grandfather assembled?” one of the elders asked. The tall, skinny one from an eastlands clan, damned if Tanner could remember any of their names.
“I mostly saw the inside of a cell, so I don’t know.”
“Are they loyal to them, or has she bewitched them?”
“A bit of both.”
It went on, questions at him, strained answers back. This was the longest he had gone without that drink, and he felt his muscles twitching with the urge to run, to jump… His lungs seemed to fill deeper, his blood was hotter. It felt good, physically, amazing even, except for the quakes—he didn’t want to live through withdrawals again in his life. He sort of was, though, only it was his mind that suffered.
The sight of his father in the crowd distracted him from the questions. Smoking, flicking the ash from his cigarette, and Tanner had to reason with himself that if his father was sitting there, he’d be right cold, since he only wore grease-stained jeans and a wifebeater.
Sometimes Tanner would look at a person and their face was twisted or mangled, or they looked like a beast. He forced himself to look away but it was everywhere. His hands gripped his thighs tight. It wasn’t only him, they were all seeing things. He wasn’t crazy. He didn’t need to seek out that bitter white shit to turn it off.
He couldn’t stand it, the sight of his father. He had to be able to control it. Just like with the guards. He couldn’t hear their questions, just staring at the pock-scarred nose, the squint of disapproval, the birthmark on his shoulder. “Go, get out,” he said, pointing to his father, and thumbing to the right. A soldier looked to his left and right. “Not you, him.” Tanner’s teeth grit at the scene. His father didn’t budge. “Get out!”
Lauren touched his shoulder. “Who are you yelling at?” she whispered.
“Him! He’s sitting right there. I can’t concentrate with dad looking at me.”
“Dad? It’s just—”
“I know what it is, goddamn it, I put him there!” He flexed his hand in and out of a fist and hit himself in the forehead, his face squished up, attempting to stop the magic—or start—whatever he was doing or not doing, he hated it. Lauren’s touch on his arm was comforting. He allowed his eyes to open a crack, but his father was till there. Tanner grabbed the clay cup next to him and flung it, it hit the poor bastard behind his father with a hard knock into his mask, an overbalanced wobble. Tanner’s father was gone, replaced by a very disgruntled soldier rising to his feet, offended by the dent Tanner put in his mask.
“Sit down!” The gravel in Ddun’s command would make Tanner sit, too, if it were directed at him.
An elder cleared his throat. “Let’s… try to continue. Did you see Grandfather himself?”
“Yes.”
“And was he sound? In mind, in body?”
“Yes. The same as he was when I met him before. She wants to make him King. Well, not him specifically. Any King will do. He’s just been very convenient.”
“Why?”
“I don’t fucking know why!”
Lauren pulled him away, foreheads touching as she shushed him. Ddun proposed they finish packing up the camp as soon as possible, and cross the river instead of following it, heading due east a ways. Tanner didn’t want to listen, he didn’t want these eyes on him, he wanted to hide. Especially when he couldn’t control it anymore, not like he could in the cell. He did need that potion. He needed to find out what it was.
***
“Our tent gets more colourful by the day,” Lauren said, admiring the bloodstain Dama and Aylet attempted to scrub out of it. The felt and supports were getting replaced. Someone else was out a tent. A matter of rearranging.
The guard had died, which was unfortunate, since they couldn’t question him, but the fact that Tanner had his wrists tied, and the guard that followed him through was armed, it all added up to tell her enough about what Tanner had been through.
There had been a strange smell to his breath. She made it a point to send Tanner to a cook, told him to find something like mint, or whatever else to chew. When he came back, instead of minty, his teeth were yellow, cheek bulged, technically obeying and so she shrugged. “You’re going to wear your teeth down,” she warned, and he only flashed a garish smile at her like a baboon as he sought a fire to slouch beside. Still dressed in the clothes he fell in. Black wool leggings under a black wool tunic, too tight at the shoulders, bright white and purple ribbons at the offset collar, black leather boots… he looked like an undertaker, his jaw just as stern.
More time lost, but the relief she felt at his return… Borga was seeing shapes in faces, Rudda was on the other side of the camp breaking up fights… The whole expedition was turning on its head, but Tanner was back, he was back and she cried her hope that once they all were off the leyline—whatever that meant, was it on a scroll somewhere—the disturbances would stop.
While everyone else busied themselves, she took out the book Tanner had bought, a quill an elder made, the little pot of ink, and got to work sketching how Tanner sat, looking out pensive and grave at the southern horizon, lit in a melancholy glow by the fire—until Irynna came riding up, and his back straightened, and Lauren smiled like the girl she was at the sight. Irynna spoke down to him and made him laugh. She would have to say her thanks for the sketchbook some other time.
***
“First it’s the scars, and now it’s my hair. What do you see in me, then?” Tanner had the right mix of renewed freedom and fuzzy stomach that made him content to smile at Irynna, how she blinked and breathed. He had kicked out Lauren’s little maids from their cart and pulled Irynna inside, and he lounged on the wood floor with his head in his hand, lamplight between them. She sat out of reach, sitting like a soldier, hands at her knees, a slow shake of the head in coy disapproval.
“Certainly not those teeth.”
He dug the pouch from his pocket, took a piece out for her. “Works best when there’s nothing wrong with you.”
She took it and crunched it into a ball, a professional. “I know.” She wedged it to the back of her mouth, began to chew. He was enraptured by her chewing. Soon she had a satisfying coating on her teeth and gave a little sigh.
“Now we’re on more equal footing. Both of us are disgusting,” Tanner said. She laughed, and he thought his face might fall off for all his smiling. A little ball of light flew around her head as if crowning her before hiding up in the corner of the deer-pelt roof. “You’ve got a beautiful laugh, you know.” Sincerity was his only mode of communication just then, and he hoped she knew it.
Her jaw stilled, holding the bark in her cheek, eyes not wavering from his, aged copper in the lamplight. “Thank you.”
She seemed too cautious. “Do you see anything?”
“No.”
“Do you want to?”
She shook her head rougher. Now he had to try. He let his hands get hot, pulled back the little light from the corner. She watched it float past, a flutter in his chest to see her eyes go wide with wonder. The light hovered at her heart before flitting out of the cart, leaving them both quiet in the small space.
“Do you still hate me?”
“I hate you even more now,” the wonder gone with the light, she looked down her nose at him. “I was perfectly content being one of the last sane people here. Now I’m seeing floating lights.”
He snorted. “You’re far from the last sane person here.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
“Don’t tempt me!”
Time to offend her as much as possible. “Only way you could ever get me to shut up, is if you took all your clothes off, and sat on my face.”
That really got her laughing. “Oh! You’re such a rotten bastard!”
He loved it.
Neither spoke until her laughter settled.
“I think the only person who hates me more than you do is Meired herself.”
“Good. That way when I kill her, I’ll hate you the most.”
He furrowed his brow at her. “Kill her? You?”
She nodded, slowly, not breaking gaze, as if the fact was meant to be impressed in him as obvious as the sky being blue, and it made him shiver.
“Who is she to you?”
“No one at all.”