all.
A bell rang out sharply, rising from the courtyards below, announcing the ending of lessons.
Only now did she notice the brightness of the western windows as the sun settled toward the horizon. She had been lost to the world for most of the day.
One last sob shook through her. The reality of where she was and her situation could not be ignored. She carefully stretched her legs, rolling slowly to her feet with a groan. She stood for another long spell, dazed, at a loss in which direction to move.
Who could she tell? What could she say? How could she explain?
As these impossible questions and a thousand others rattled through her skull, her feet took over. She found herself at the bucket she had filled in another life. She bent and picked up the scrub brush. She stared down at it, knowing her body had already settled on an answer.
She was no longer pure. No one would believe the truth here. All that would be understood was that she was now spoiled, fouled for any god, unfit to walk these halls. She would surely be cast out.
But not this night.
After what happened here, she could not survive banishment.
Not this night.
Dart knew what she must do.
She shed her clothes and used the cold water and brush to clean her body. At first, she worked in a half panic, fearing being caught. Her hands trembled. But slowly her fingers gripped the brush more securely. She concentrated on the simple act of bathing, falling back on ritual. The cool water helped calm her.
Once clean, she dried herself with rags. She still bled, so she padded herself with her ripped undergarments and climbed back into her outers. She carefully inspected her skirts and rubbed dust and dried guano over any bloody spots, hiding all evidence.
She washed her hands in the pail and stared at her shattered reflection in the rocking waters. The girl who had climbed these steps was gone, vanished into the darkness as surely as Master Willet’s butchered form.
She stared at the spot on the floor. She would never return here.
Her eyes settled next on Pupp, sitting diligently, patiently. Like her, he had been transformed in this room, becoming a deeper mystery. She understood less about him, only that he had stood by her, protected her.
For now, that was enough.
Though an ache still lay buried deep inside her, where no scrub brush could ever reach, Dart put away her bucket and broom and broke open a bale of fresh hay. The smell of summer and pasture filled the room as she kicked a fresh layer around the chamber. She spread it thick to fully cover the floor.
By the time she was done, the windows to the east had gone dark and the sun was but a weak glow to the west. She could no longer hide up here.
She crossed to the door and pulled it open. The torchlight was blinding. As she blinked away the glare, laughter echoed up from far below, bright and cheerful.
It sounded brittle and brought an ache to her head.
Supper was already being served. No one seemed to remember the little girl up in the tower. No one missed Dart.
She headed down the stairs. Each step hurt, reminding her of something she hadn’t wanted to face.
Someone had known she was up here. Someone had let Master Willet pass up the stairs, had let him know a girl was alone in the rookery.
Something darker than anger filled her. Whoever it was, they would pay. The dartweed that grew in the courtyard, her namesake, developed woody thorns as it aged… thorns that were seldom seen until they pierced the flesh.
“To me, Pupp,” she said quietly. “To me.”
3
“It aren’t that bad if you ignore the flies.”
Tylar studied the moving feast that was his meal. Flies coated the stew of gristle and fat. The crust of bread atop it looked to be milled more from mold than flour. But he’d had worse. He soaked the hard bread into the broth, trying to soften the crust enough to chew. Tiny worms used the bread as a raft, climbing aboard.
“What about these maggots?” he asked sourly, shaking the crust clean of the squiggling stowaways.
“Nothing wrong with ’em. Them’s the only thing that gives this stew any taste.”
Tylar bit into the bread and glanced to the ragged rat of a man who had joined him in his cell that morning, tossed in naked and striped with whippings across his back. A head shorter than Tylar, he was all bone and beard. He set upon the meal like a hinter-king upon a feast. From the gray hairs laced in his red beard, he was not a young man, but what little muscle on him was still hard. About a decade older than myself, Tylar judged.
The prisoner noted his attention. “Name’s Rogger,” he mumbled over the edge of his bowl.
“Tylar.”
“So how’s a Shadowknight end up here?” The man touched three fingers to the corner of his eye, indicating Tylar’s tattoos.
“Apparently I killed a god.”
Rogger choked out a gobbet of gristle. “You! So you’re the one!”
Tylar glanced up to the barred window high on the stone wall. He had been imprisoned here seven days. He’d not had one visitor until now.
“No wonder there were so many guards in the halls,” Rogger continued, his face buried in his meal, spitting out pieces of bone as punctuation. “I even spotted a pair of bloodnullers at the end of each hall, reeking and covered in shite.”
Tylar nodded. Bloodnullers were smeared in a god’s black bile, their soft solids. Such a blessing granted the power to vanquish the Grace of a person or object with the mere touch of a single finger. They were stationed to keep Tylar in check, in case he attempted to use Dark Graces to escape. Their continued presence seemed a waste since they had already run their hands over his entire body when he first arrived here in shackles. If he’d had any hidden Graces, they would have been abolished at that time.
Still, Tylar understood their worry. While occasional rogue gods had been killed, never had one of the Hundred been slain. No one was taking any chances.
Rogger coughed a piece of gristle loose from his throat and nodded at Tylar. “It seems they must crowd all their god-sinners into the same damn cell on this cursed island.”
Tylar returned his attention fully to the man. “God-sinner? You? What did you do?”
He laughed. “I was caught sneaking into ol’ Balger’s place, trying to nick a bit from the bastard’s vault.”
“At Foulsham Dell?” Tylar asked, eyebrows rising. Balger was one of the seven gods that shared the First Land. His settled realm, Foulsham Dell, lay at the foot of the Middleback Range, bordering the wilds of a hinterland, where rogue gods roamed and no law governed. The Dell was a place of murderers, pirates, and scoundrels. And the god Balger was the worst of the bunch, known equally for his debaucheries and his cruelties. He was as close to a rogue as any of the hundred settled gods. His entire realm made Punt seem a tame and civilized place.
Tylar eyed the man, wondering what sort of thief tried to steal from such a god’s larder.
“And I would’ve made it out of there,” Rogger added, “if it hadn’t been for some handmaiden coming to the vault to deposit a jar full of her lord’s blessed piss.”
“A jar? You mean a repostilary?” Shock rang in his voice. Repostilary jars were vessels of a god’s humoral fluids, sacred beyond measure, handled only by handmaidens and handmen.
Rogger nodded and laughed again, spraying spittle out his beard. “Apparently ol’ Balger has trouble holding his bladder throughout the night.”
“So you were caught?”
As he ate, the man tilted to the side, baring his right buttock. A brand, long healed, had been burned into the
