The Cursewright's Vow

Chapter 27: A Queen of Wolves, Part 4

 Ammas bent down and drew a series of knives from his belt, laying them out on the nightstand like a chirurgeon's table. With his skymetal blade he slit Yvelle's shift from the throat to her navel. Although he expected to see what he found, the sight still unnerved him: from her collar bones down to her waist, covering every visible inch of skin, her flesh was marked with ancient ritual symbols for the moons and pictograms of hunting wolves, alongside written enchantments in the bastardized tongues the Sons of the Moon had used for their rites. For a moment his hands shook too badly to proceed. His father had allowed this to happen. Now, at least, he could repair some of the damage. Willing his hands to be steady, he began to make the necessary incisions.

Denisius grimaced, resolutely looking down the apartments and not behind him, despite the thoroughly unpleasant sounds rising from the bed. Once at Coldspring Hall some of his father's men had returned early from a hunt, Erstan's chief huntsman having been terribly injured by a stag. The beast's antlers had impaled the man's thigh, and they had remained stuck in his flesh when they carried him back to the manor house. The sounds of the Madrenite sisters tending to the chief huntsman had been something like this, but they had been accompanied by the man's muffled screams of agony. The total silence here, save for Ammas's breathing and the occasional burst of weeping from elsewhere in the house, was somehow far more unsettling.

Perhaps half an hour passed before the sounds ceased and he felt Ammas's hand on his shoulder. Turning around, he saw the cursewright was pale, shivering, and drenched with sweat. Denisius doubted all of it was due to his state of exhaustion. 

"It's done," Ammas said. He glanced over his shoulder. Yvelle's form was sheeted as if being prepared for burial. "There's nothing else we can do for her. I'd say we should flee back to Ismene and the ship as fast as we can, but we cannot ignore these wolves. They're in mourning now, but when they come back to their senses their rage will be terrible."

Denisius frowned, pondering this. "What if we sent a message to Leusenia? There's a garrison there. Tell them there's an infestation of werewolves in the Empress-Consort's retreat. Don't mention Yvelle at all."

Ammas scowled. "The moment they hear that, they'll know Yvelle was the victim of some disaster. But perhaps it's the only way to handle it. Certainly you and I are not up to the task of dealing with these creatures. Come. We'll send the message just before we set sail. I want to be at sea long before the garrison arrives."

They invited the steward to join them, but the man adamantly refused. "My place is at her Ladyship's side, and if that means my life comes to an end with my service, so be it. If you can save her daughter, that will be enough for me." Refusing further debate, the steward, whose name was Thorsel, shuffled into the bedchamber, kneeling at the foot of the bed and sinking deep into prayer. 

Neither Ammas nor Denisius were pleased with this. Even if the wolves were of a mind to spare him, they doubted an enraged Imperial garrison would be so merciful, and if he wound up in the Emperor's custody only the gods knew what sort of miseries he might suffer. But it was his decision, and in the end Ammas knew it was vital he bring the cure to Carala as soon as he could. Time he spent arguing with Thorsel was time uselessly wasted. He and Denisius departed the Empress-Consort's retreat, their flight accompanied by the inconsolable weeping of the wolf-children.

They were at sea before the sun rose, their messenger on his way to the Leusenia garrison. Ammas fell into a deep sleep at once, curled on his side in his berth, but Denisius found it more difficult to drift off, however exhausted he was. Over and over his mind worried at hundreds of questions for which he had no answer. How could the Emperor have done this to his own wife? How could Yvelle have seen her condition as something to be shared with her children? And what in the world would Carala think of what Yvelle had done? Would she even want the cure, knowing it contained traces of her own mother's heart? 

Of course he had no one to debate these matters with except Ammas, and Ammas was so deeply asleep Denisius sometimes wondered if he had fallen back into the frightening unconsciousness that had followed his actions in Gallowsport. Every now and then the cursewright would mutter in his sleep, and Denisius's fears would be allayed a bit.

After a solid fourteen hours Ammas rose from his berth, limping out of their small private cabin to find a bite of food and some seretto tea, if there was any on the ship. Denisius had been surprised to see how well Ammas took to shipboard travel, but then he remembered he was part of the family that had once ruled Losris Nadak. When Ammas returned, offering Denisius a plate of fresh limes and dried meat, the younger man put a more prosaic question to him than the ones that had so troubled him. "Will the garrison be able to handle them? What if the wolves escape into the wild?"

Ammas sucked thoughtfully on a lime wedge. "Othma thought creating a ritual wolf risked a plague the likes of which would put the Yellow Death to shame. I wish we had been able to do something about them, but even if we had Barthim, Vos, and Silenio with us our chances would not have been good. But I don't imagine many of them will flee the manor house before the garrison arrives. They were inconsolable, possibly even stricken through the blood, their connection to Yvelle. It may be the Leusenia garrison has some standing orders regarding incidents at Yvelle's retreat, even if they don't understand them. Put the whole thing to the torch, maybe." Ammas smiled humorlessly. "Besides, if a handful of wolves do escape, perhaps the Emperor will see the merit in paying a cursewright to deal with the matter."

Denisius, who thought Ammas looked too sickly to deal with a starving dog, much less a werewolf, nodded uneasily.

The voyage across the Azure Sea and along the coast was uneventful, save for a bruising autumnal storm that forced their ship to make port at a tiny fishing village on the Torchlight Coast for three days. Ammas assured Denisius that they had enough of a cushion to be sure the delay wouldn't prevent them from reaching Gallowsport before Carala's next change. 

Nonetheless, when Denisius glanced in their cabin upon returning from a light supper, he found the cursewright poring anxiously over his lunar manifest, muttering to himself as he calculated dates on a scrap of paper. Ammas seemed to be getting his strength back, at least, so Denisius demurred from pressing the issue. But he found sleep difficult that night, trying to work out the phases of the moons in his own head, and tormenting himself with dire fancies about what Carala and Silenio might do if they transformed and broke away from whatever methods Barthim used to keep them imprisoned.

The Gallowsport docks were bustling when they finally made port, late one chilly afternoon, a light rain pattering down on them as they disembarked. Ammas still leaned on his walking stick but seemed to Denisius far more robust than he had been when they first left the city. No longer did he need to sit down and rest every ten minutes or so. Three days before they dropped anchor he had shed his eyepatch, though a faint reddish cast lingered in the white of that eye. 

Judging from the level of activity around the docks and warehouses, the city had either recovered from the destruction of the Swiftfoot wolves or had decided to ignore it completely. Denisius supposed the latter was more likely; if Gallowsport kept its harbor shut down for too long the whole of the Anointed Realms would suffer. When they passed the Swiftfoot warehouse on their way to Rowancroft Street Denisius saw it was under the control of the city guard. Hurriedly they moved along, hoping they wouldn't be recognized. The guard took no note of them.