Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1 - Chapter 61: Chapter 61

When Arlen woke up, he was convinced for a long minute that he was dead. It wasn't long before the panic set in, and with it came pain.
He groaned as fire surged up his leg and set his heart pulsing behind his eyes. The table he lay on was wet and the air was rank and stale. His face felt sticky and stiff, and he didn't recognise the coffered ceiling above him. He reached up with heavy, clumsy hands to claw at the itchy substance on his face, and someone grabbed them and put them firmly down on the table either side of his body. The big face looming over him looked familiar somehow.
"Is he going to be like this for long?" a heavily-accented voice rumbled. "Don't much fancy spoon-feeding tonight."
"He'll be back to normal in an hour or two," said a brisk voice that didn't sound familiar at all. "He'll be very tired for the next couple of days, but will be perfectly capable of feeding himself, you'll be relieved to hear."
"That I am," the man above Arlen's face muttered, still studying him. Arlen chuckled. Usk didn't look half so menacing from this angle.
"I can't feel my leg," he said. It was incredibly funny. He didn't understand why no one else was laughing. A minute ago he was sure there had been pain, but now his leg felt about as useful as a pillar of rock. "I can't feel my fucking leg."
"That'll be the drugs," someone said nearby, which somehow only made it funnier. Usk sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
"Let's put him out again before he shits himself laughing," the brute muttered. "Gods, man, if your boss could see you now."
Arlen tried to stifle the spluttering and failed. It was just so dark-damned funny, and he didn't know why. He hoped his leg was still there, at least. Losing it would be a real bugger.
A small man wearing tiny pince-nez replaced Usk's face looming over him. The tiny little frames were threatening to slide off his nose, and he looked far too respectable to have let Arlen into his house. The symbol of the physicians' guild was stitched into his breast pocket, a bone crossed with a needle and suturing thread. The table rattled with his laughter. By the night, it was starting to hurt. It only peripherally occurred to him that under normal circumstances this should have been a very serious situation.
He didn't struggle as the cloth came down over his mouth. He was swimming, and pain was a distant memory.
Then there was nothing.
His second awakening was much ruder. Through the foggy darkness of sleep, the pain began as tingling, then burning, and then a searing agony that jolted him into cruelly sharp consciousness.
For the second time, he couldn't work out where he was. Then the cracked plaster on the ceiling, the exposed brick, the smell of sweat and mould clued him in that he was at home and in his room. Someone had laid a musty blanket over him and closed the door without latching it. It couldn't have been him, because he always locked it and slept in his clothes. Anger and apprehension warred in him when he realised someone had taken off his trousers.
It had been a long time since he'd been able to say that.
With great difficulty he levered himself onto one elbow. His shirt was covered in sweat and he had an unpleasant bitter taste in his mouth, throbbing pain all over his body, and his brain was full of wool. He flipped the blanket back and stared dully at the bandage-swaddled lump attached to his knee. He curled his lip. Nict's balls, did the damn thing hurt. He tried to wriggle his foot to no avail. Something seemed odd, but he was still too foggy to work out what it was.
"Fuck," he muttered. He was even more immobile than when he'd had the crossbow bolt hanging out of it.
The floor juddered, and then someone knocked on the door. Arlen's hand flew to his hip, and he was relieved to find a dagger there. He gripped it hard. "Come in."
"You're up, then," Usk grunted by way of greeting, shoving his big face around the door. Arlen was oddly relieved to see it, though he was suspecting now that Usk had been the one to remove his trousers and it was hard to meet his eye.
"Hardly," Arlen said, relaxing his grip on the blade and trying to ignore the trembling ache in his shoulder from propping himself at an awkward angle.
"Could be worse." Usk let the door swing wide but didn't step inside. He crossed his arms over his broad chest. "Could be dead."
"Sometimes I wonder," Arlen muttered, scowling at his bandaged leg. "What did the physician say?"
"That you're dark-damned lucky, is what he said," Usk replied. "Wound rot reached the bone."
"The bone." Arlen didn't quite make it a question. He tried to wriggle his foot again. It remained stubbornly unmoving. "Where the fuck is my foot?"
"You think you can just recover from wound rot like that once it reaches the bone?" Usk growled. He fidgeted. "You can't. Wasn't an easy call to make, but it had to be made."
"You let him cut my leg off?" Arlen yelled, hitting notes he hadn't reached since before he hit manhood. "Damn right it wasn't an easy call to make, it wasn't fucking yours!"
If he had been able to get up, he would have punched the impassive look off the brute's face, and then kept punching until it was pulp. He had trusted someone else's judgement one time, and it had lost him his leg, and with it his dignity and probably his reputation in the guild. Words failed him. He steamed for a minute, then gathered the blanket up to his face and screamed into it until he went hoarse. And the pain was terrible; the longer he was awake, the worse it got, until he could barely think between that and his rage. Then, slowly, like sand in a timer, the pain overtook that as well. He deflated, leaned back against the wall. A bead of sweat prickled as it ran down the side of his face and he was suddenly, unbearably weak.
"Please tell me he gave you drugs," he murmured through bloodless lips.
"Ain't any other reason I'd come in here knowing I'd get my head bitten off," Usk said, producing a vial from his pocket. Arlen vaguely recognised the substance inside.
"That had better not be belladonna."
"It's some mixture or other." Usk tipped the liquid from one end of the vial to the other and then shook it. It went murky grey-green. Arlen grimaced. "More dilute than our belladonna, seeing as a physician's not in the business of bumping people off."
Arlen held out a hand that felt like a lump of clay. Usk pressed the vial into it.
"Inhale it," Usk said. "Little sniff if you want a boost, big sniff if you want to turn the lights out."
Arlen had spent much more time than he'd have liked unconscious already. He vaguely remembered the visit into the city and had even less hold on the passage of time since then, but Usk had changed his clothes and that happened very rarely, which meant he had been out a while. He wondered how many men would have taken this opportunity to kill him given half a chance. He had plenty of enemies.
He was genuinely surprised that Usk hadn't tried it, and then remembered the brute had let someone chop his leg off.
He took a small breath, and sighed as some of the roaring pain faded. It didn't fade nearly as much as he'd have liked, but he didn't dare risk falling asleep again. His leg already felt ungainly and strange, and he was so sure he could feel his foot at the end of it. He pictured wriggling his toes, and was almost convinced Usk was having a laugh. But the stump fell short of his other foot by a long stretch. It was a miracle he hadn't seen it straight away.
"As soon as I figure out how to move, I'm going to throttle you in your sleep," he murmured, rolling his head around to glower at the barbarian in the doorway. He could have wept; he almost wanted to, to give him some outlet for the restless rage and humiliation burning in his chest. He clenched his fists and set his jaw so hard it hurt, tendons jumping out under his skin. He would not cry in front of Usk; not when he had been brought so low already. He was a Devil, damn it.
Usk just looked sad, which made Arlen even angrier. He didn't want pity; certainly not from Usk. What did Usk have to complain about? He could still earn money and get around on his own legs. Arlen was ruined. The wound would have done him more favours if it had killed him.
"Get out," he muttered. "Just get out, would you?"
Usk left without arguing. The door clicked shut behind him.
Arlen let his head fall back against the wall, once, then again, and squeezed his eyes shut. His throat felt constricted.
For the first time in his life, he didn't know what to do.
Marick would surely not keep him on as any kind of ranked guild member like this. He earned a reasonable cut, but nowhere near enough to afford the prosthetic limbs that were coming into fashion for military use. He had seen them once or twice on Annexe War veterans, and remembered being grudgingly impressed. It had never occurred to him that he might ever need one. On his earnings he'd be lucky to get a half-decent peg.
The thought was too much. He looked around for something to vomit in and spotted a ceramic pot on the far side of the room. Horror stole away all thoughts of other things.
"Usk!" he bellowed.
"You gonna tear me a new one if I come in?" Usk's voice came muffled through the door. Arlen ignored it.
"Shoot me," he said, unable to tear his eyes from the pot.
"Eh?"
"Get a crossbow and don't fucking miss." Arlen glared. "I want to be dead before I need that pot."
Usk only laughed. "That all? Don't tell me you're precious. You never struck me as the type." When Arlen's face grew a shade more dangerous, his smile faded. "Arlen Blackheart, defeated by half a missing leg. Who would've thought it?"
Arlen lunged, as then hissed as pain rocketed up his spine. He lay back, gasping and spluttering, willing it to fade. Sweat rolled down his face in fat drops and he bared his teeth in an ugly grin. "And what exactly are you getting at?"
"I'm saying one of the most fearsome assassins of the Reach might last more 'n an hour before giving up over a wound. A dark-damned bad wound, aye, I'll grant you. But you ran far enough with that bolt hanging out of you. You learned how to pick the most complex lock invented in two hours. You killed a man for the first time when you were a sprat. And you can't adapt to this?"
Arlen glared, breath hissing through his teeth. Usk had never spoken to him like this; it was the longest speech Arlen had ever heard him come out with. And all that, to patronise him – he knew what his achievements were, and he had achieved all of them with his leg still attached.
An uneasy silence stretched between them. Arlen had no words left to say, but couldn't bring himself to make Usk leave. He stared at the stump lying on the bedsheets, willing his foot back into existence. He could feel it there, but the air where it should have been remained stubbornly empty. Usk sighed, and then with a wary glance shuffled further into the room. He eased his massive bulk down onto the end of Arlen's mattress, surprisingly gentle, but Arlen grimaced anyway as his stump twinged. He took another measured breath from the top of the vial of sedative and felt his muscles relax.
"I know what you're like," Usk rumbled, speaking to his knees. "I know you think we're all out to kill you. Might be many of us are." He inclined his head to scan Arlen with one yellow eye. "I ain't one of 'em, and as I see it you're going to be pretty reliant on me the next few weeks. Maybe longer."
"Thanks for reminding me," Arlen spat. He flicked at a drop of sweat that had rolled to the end of his nose. "Smug fuck."
"There's talk," Usk said. Arlen looked up sharply. The tone suggested it was Devil business, and 'talk' never meant anything good.
Besides, he'd take any distraction he could get. Gossip was as good as anything.
"Talk of what?"
"That Marick is dealing with Caelum."
Despite being in an enclosed room, Arlen looked around instinctively for eavesdroppers. "He wouldn't."
"Is there anything he wouldn't do?" Usk asked. "Jesper told me there's been another Unspoken death. Marick had a team break into the guard post and steal the culprit's weapons. But not the body."
"If he didn't take the body, that means it wasn't a Devil that did it." Arlen tried to keep a level voice, partly from anger at the stupidity of the suggestion, and partly to crush the insidious little voice in his head that was reminding him of Marick's increasingly strange behaviour over the months.
"If he took the weapons and not the body, that means he's got dangerous ideas," Usk replied, "Or it means he's hiding the methods from the Unspoken Guild. I daresay their scholars could work out exactly what was causing the deaths, given long enough. But not without the evidence, they can't."
"He asked me to investigate who did it the first time," Arlen said. "He didn't know."
"Have you considered," Usk leaned in, "that he was keeping you out of the way?"
Arlen opened his mouth to argue, then remembered the night Marick had kidnapped Jordan without telling him. His evasiveness about his sudden change of heart. Marick was keeping something from him, undoubtedly, but a deal with Caelum was a stretch.
"Your hatred of those winged shits isn't exactly news," Usk said. "You'd oppose him every step of the way. You're his second. You're popular, whether you like it or not. The kind of person a lot of men would follow. If you disagreed with him publicly, it would get bloody."
"You're talking bollocks. No one in their right mind would make a deal with Caelum and no Devil would get involved in any scheme the Orthanians have their grubby hands all over. I'm not talking about this anymore. That talk is all a crock of shit."
Arlen was shaking, and he wasn't sure what from. The idea was ridiculous; Marick knew the value of the Unspoken. He knew what the Caelumese were capable of, and he knew that a good portion of his guild had been forced into a life of crime by their atrocities. His scars ached in time with the low throbbing of his ruined leg. Usk was speaking treason, pure and simple. Arlen didn't know what he had hoped to achieve by bothering him with rumours, especially lying here in the state that he was.
"You should bear it in mind," Usk growled, gaze intense. "Just in case you notice anything. In case he does anything...unexpected."
Arlen didn't miss the glance at his stump, and snarled, "If he tries to bump me off, it's because you let someone chop my leg off, not because he's in bed with Lucifer."
Usk looked unconvinced. Arlen tried to find some of the anger he had felt moments before, but that tiny betraying part of his brain was telling him he had known he would probably lose the leg. He had known when it had started leaking pus and stinking. He had even suspected it when he woke up after the wound was first inflicted. He still hated Usk for making it happen when it did.
"You're lucky," Usk repeated, guessing the direction of his thoughts. "You'd left it any longer, you'd have lost it to the hip."
Arlen stared at the ceiling and wondered whether he was lucky or whether he'd just delayed the inevitable. His rank in the guild was a curse in that respect. Many a Devil had lost parts to jobs gone wrong, but there was only one way to go in guild ranks, and that was up. If you weren't holding steady or going up, you were dead weight.
Arlen could not let himself become dead weight.
"Did the physician take up all of the money?" he asked.
"Most of it. You have enough spare to live on for a while."
"I don't want it to live on, I need a limb," Arlen growled. "Then living takes care of itself."
Usk thought for a moment. Arlen pretended he didn't see relief in his eyes. He wasn't calm – far from it – but he could bury himself in what needed to be done and pretend he was. At some point it would become true enough to live with.
"I can't go around getting quotes," Usk said, "someone'll notice. Do you want to send the Unspoken boy?"
Arlen's mouth twisted. "If there's been a death, the Unspoken will be on high alert. Yddris won't let you anywhere near him." He paused, an idea forming. "Send Darin to get him instead."
Usk looked furtive all of a sudden. "He can't do the job?"
"He's not finding out about this," Arlen said, narrowing his eyes, "and if I find out you told him I'll do more than throttle you." He studied the fidgeting barbarian for a moment. "You're not telling me something."
"Yddris will recognise Darin as well," Usk said, after a long, uncomfortable silence.
"And how would that be?" Arlen's teeth squeaked together. It was a miracle Usk could understand him through them.
"Might be that an intervention was needed that night," Usk said. "The boy has little control. You may be biting off more than you can chew with this one."
Arlen took a long, steadying breath. He carefully cleared his mind of all thought about the matter before it stacked up into rage that would result in both of them being injured. Getting mobile again was the most important thing. Everything else could wait. "Do you...think he will be prevented getting access?"
"Couldn't say," Usk replied, scratching his chin. His nails rasped against his stubble, reminding Arlen that he also badly needed a shave. "Depends on if I can convince him to lie. Boy looked damn guilty enough about the whole thing to try and override whatever his tutor says. And of course, we're assuming his tutor will be there. As a Reach representative for the Unspoken guild, Harkenn'll be wanting him at the castle most of the time."
Arlen allowed himself a vindictive little smile as he said, "My, my, Usk, you do have a brain in there. You really had me fooled." He scowled. "Fine. Fucking fine. Get me something to write on and I'll tell you what to do."
When Usk had left, Arlen allowed the tide of weakness to spill through the barrier he'd put up against it. His head was full of air, while his limbs were leaden. His phantom toes were prickling and burning, and he took another breath of the sedative mixture. It only made the dizziness worse, and through the haze he tried to remember the last time he had felt this weak and vulnerable. Usk's words played through his head, along with flashes of Marick's strange behaviour, and a deep feeling of unease settled in his gut like nausea. He put it down to the sedative, but his mind kept turning it over. Kept turning over the one certainty he did have: that if he became dead weight, he would sink to the bottom and drown there.
It was a good job he'd been swimming all his life.