![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreIron and Wine
By: Amber Michelle
For:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kytha
Rating: T
Series: Illusion of Memory "canon."
Words: 2717
Other installments:
1: Paradise
2: A Moth to Flame
3: Untouchable
4. Iron and Wine
5. A Scarab of the Sea (god only knows when this will be written)
Notes: this story arc needs a title. For Christmas 2008, just a little bit late. :D
.............................................
Judas stopped counting the years when the people he knew started dying. He didn't see their hair gray or their muscles shrivel around their bones, but when the numbers could be counted more easily in decades - fifty years since the change, sixty-two, seventy-two - he knew it was happening. Two hundred leagues south of Lorien, somewhere in the Sahma Desert under tents made of canvas and animal skin, his brothers were bent by the years, their skin dark and papery. Their teeth would be gone, or worn down so far as to be useless. He was seventeen when his mistress tasted his blood. The youngest of the boys was twelve. Perhaps that child was the only one left.
When he dwelled on it next and realized nearly two hundred years had passed since he saw the tents belonging to his clan, he felt a small twinge in his chest and looked south, trying to picture what the camp must look like if anybody had survived. The image was so faded, so different from the mountain outcrop he crouched behind then, waiting for some sign of travelers to snatch a meal from, he couldn't summon more than a sigh. Then a bright flash of color - a merchant's coat, peeking from beneath a dun brown cloak - caught Judas's eye, and the thought slipped his mind.
It didn't matter. He walked beyond the flow of time.
We've been traveling together two years, Raeger said to him at breakfast. Do you think anybody in Artolia would recognize me now? He didn't remember what he said. It must have been a denial - her skin was burned almost as dark as his used to be, and her hair bleached to a grassy yellow that blended with the sands on bright days, and sometimes looked like gold thread. Even Jelanda's hair wasn't as vivid, but he disliked the comparison because his last memory of the Artolian princess was of her golden curls soaked in blood he couldn't taste.
Raeger was so different sometimes Judas didn't recognize her. When he first dragged her down to the desert she was still soft and pale, colorless, her mannerisms boyish and ungraceful. Egypt was a cruel test, and she walked out of it refined like a fine metal, like a diamond - she ran like a devil, strode across the sands almost as easily as he did. Her arms were stronger from climbing and falling, swinging weapons and throwing rocks and bricks. She even had a good aim.
No. Her own mother wouldn't recognize her. If they returned to Artolia - though he saw no reason to bother - nobody would look at her and see the girl whose likeness was posted on every tavern wall with the promise of ten thousand gold for her capture.
The narrow isles of Port Cyrene's market crowded a whitewashed brick building large enough to be a coliseum. Voices echoed, hammer strikes from the forge and sizzling from the food vendors blended to a dull roar in the background. Straw and dust littered the floor, bits of flatbread and kernels of roasted seeds crunched under his boots. The silk vendor fanned herself behind her red curtain. The tea seller sipped from an earthenware cup beaded with condensation, and his neighbor watched with a scowl. Only the food vendors were busy at the time of afternoon Judas chose to shop - lines of five or even ten stretched down beside the stalls for meat skewers and potato samosas. He paused by the woman frying sweet cinnamon chips, but the line was too long.
He cut across the blue-tiled plaza and slipped between two sandal vendors to a quieter area of the bazaar. Two isles to the left and a long walk down to the east wall brought him to the stand he was looking for.
"My lord." The jeweler bowed over his display, a towel in the hand he rested at his throat. His shop occupied a small enclosure with a metalworker and a smithy that lay dark, separated from the rest of the market by walls of whitewashed screens that stretched to the ceiling. Two men from the city guard loitered at the gateway. "How may I serve you this afternoon?"
Judas reached into his coat, pulled out a wooden token. "I commissioned an item from your partner four days ago - a lapis dangle in a gold setting, with a matching chain and cuff." He allowed the man to take his proof of purchase, examine the writing, and then he pushed past a red curtain into the building, the cypress rectangle left on the display. The other half of the fee hung in a pouch from his belt, and it wasn't a negligible sum.
If he had Raeger repay him for every trinket and token he'd given her the last two years, he would be a rich man all over again. Like any noble's daughter, she had no idea of their value; she understood gold was more expensive than silver, which was more valuable than brass, and she knew the cost of a meal or a night at an inn. She was wont to drop an entire handful of coins - ancient, current, local or foreign - for a single slice of pineapple. He'd given up on expecting any sort of practicality from her, though to her credit she'd erred on the side of avoiding markets altogether after the incident in Aragon that almost got her inducted into slavery. She learned.
Slowly.
Or, to be fair, quickly - but only when she slipped her metaphoric leash and got herself into trouble.
The jeweler came back out with a long cedar box, and after examining his purchase for the proper vertices and hieroglyphs, unhooked the money pouch from his belt and handed it over. The silver coins were counted, weighed, and one bitten before he was allowed to leave. Judas slid the slim box into a deep pocket sewn behind the lining of his coat, clasped the front, and left the bazaar by the nearest exit.
Two years. No-- more. They'd traveled together three months before descending into the desert, two of those bound by a vow to avenge the princess, and the humans ran themselves ragged all the way to Artolia. Even Raeger had barely slept. Do you ever want to go back? he'd asked her that morning, after her observation. She didn't answer right away. Instead she poured tea for herself, diluted the bitter roasted taste with milk and a dollop of honey. What would I do if I did return?
The temple clock told him it was three in the afternoon, and the sun seared the back of his neck where the hair was caught in his collar and parted to show the skin. He felt the pale white of his scalp prickling. His ring was hot around his finger. Cyrene's citizens were smart enough not to be out at this time of the day, when the sun was at its hottest and the cotton ghutra they wore on their heads lent no shelter, their loose robes no reprieve. Judas felt almost as if his body radiated heat for the first time in years. He didn't perspire; his linen shirt didn't stick to his chest beneath his coat as it should have, and his neck wasn't cooled by the hot puff of breeze. The earring rattled in its box with every step.
When he arrived the courtyard of the inn was empty; stableboys slumped in the shade of the surrounding wall and the straggling branches of a pomegranate tree. The stone facade blinded Judas with reflected sunlight. Inside the entryway was lit by a single lamp, the wooden mesh shutters all closed and locked; the common room was empty, and in the heat smelled of old wine and moist wood, though he'd seen them clean it every night since his arrival. He took the stairs two at a time and found Raeger stretched out on the bed when he leaned on the door to push it open, then kicked it closed.
"It's almost worse inside," she said, not bothering to lift her head. Her green silk wrap did cling to the moist skin on her arms, legs, and wrinkled around her hips where it was twisted around by her tossing and turning. "At least at a ruin we'd have shade and wind."
"You'll like this, then." He unclasped his coat and let it slide back, down over his arms. "We're going to pierce your ear again." Raeger started up, head and shoulders lifting from the quilt and her eyes wide. He pulled the box from his pocket and shook it. "I'll order some ice in a minute."
She started to sit up, and got as high as her elbows would prop her before she collapsed onto the pillows again and sighed. She blew a strand of hair from her face and it curled over the cotton covers. "I'll wait."
Judas snorted and threw his coat over the foot of the bed. "Which of us hasn't left the room for two days?" He slid the box onto the table and unhooked the shutters, pushing one open far enough to let the air drift in. It smelled dusty, and the light shined between, a long, rectangular beam across the wood floor. Geometric shapes were cast through the shutters. "We'll be leaving for the Nile again as soon as I can find a ship that'll sail along the coast."
Raeger pulled his pillow to her side of the bed, pushed it behind her, and tried to sit up. "I thought you couldn't travel on water."
"We sailed down the Nile to get away from Sutekh, didn't we?" He untied the cuffs of his shirt and rolled them up past the elbow. There was a leather case with a silver needle and a spool of thread in her pack; he pushed her journal and tea pouch aside to find it, and the heated, grassy scent of chamomile was at least better than sand. "The problem with sea voyages is the lack of food sources. Eventually even sailors will figure out someone is trying to kill them."
He left the case on the table and went downstairs to order a bowl of ice - cubes, not chips or slivers, or slush, and yes it did matter - then returned to their room. This time she was up and sitting at the table, and her afternoon meal had been delivered; she ripped triangles from a round of flatbread, dipped them in honey, then in a mince of nuts and bits of dried fruit. A slim decanter of sweet wine sat at the center of the table, unopened, with two earthenware cups. She shrugged when he lifted a brow.
Judas poured a cup for himself and sipped. A servant knocked at the door and came in, brought the ice and left it on the clear side of the table. When she'd closed the door and her muffled footsteps receded down the hall, he put the cup down and pulled Raeger's hair back into a braid, twisting the hair firmly to keep it from falling over her left ear again. There was nothing to secure it, so he let the ends dangle loose. The candle flame wavered when he brought it to the table, flaring when it met the current of air at the window.
"Can we wait until I'm done?" She stuffed a triangle into her mouth. The nuts crunched audibly.
He opened the box, the leather case, pulled them over to the window. She had patches and squares of muslin pinned inside, and he freed one for the blood. "It won't take long." The ice was only marginally colder than his own fingers. "Try not to bite through anything important, that's all."
She rolled her eyes, and her head with them until he stopped her, set her straight again. Judas chose two long pieces of ice from the bowl and pressed them to the sides of her ear - the upper skin of the lobe needed to be numb, and the cartilage near the top. Raeger flinched at the initial contact.
So trusting. How many times could he have slit her veins in the last week alone? And yet the thought rarely crossed his mind.
He tested her with the needle; can you feel this? What about this?, prodded her until he determined she was numb and held the needle over the flame until it darkened. Then he pulled the skin as far from her head as it would bend and pushed the needle through. Little ruby drops beaded at the end. He wiped the piercing with the muslin and worked the earring in, securing it at the back - a lapis scarab in a gold setting, and a tear of blue dangled from her ear. Judas let the cuff dangle on its gold chain until he pierced the upper curve of her ear so it would secure. Another bead of blood rolled. He swiped it with his thumb and sucked it clean, clipped the cuff closed.
The copper tang spread on his tongue and filled his mouth like vapor - like a fine wine, half scent and half taste, a window to the soul if one felt poetic. Clean, then slightly sweet. Raeger reached back to feel the new addition and asked him something. Are you done or is that it? And when he didn't answer, his name - Judas?
She turned. The shine of her hair made him move, and Judas reached past her shoulder for the cup of wine, only half full. He drained it, poured another, drained that one too. She watched him swirl it in his mouth and swallow hard, a line between her brows, and he didn't care. He poured another cup.
"What's wrong with you?"
Judas looked at her sideways. The gold chain gleamed against the curve of her ear, still smeared red. "Nothing." He drank. "Go clean up." He rubbed his ear to indicate what he meant, then tipped the cup again. He could still taste it. What good was Shirazi wine if it couldn't sweeten his mouth, drive it away? It certainly wouldn't intoxicate him.
Raeger licked her fingers, got up, and disappeared behind him. He heard the scrape of the porcelain basin on its chest and the slosh of water. Her knees hit the floor, her silks slithered.
Two years, and he hadn't once made that mistake, even on the many occasions he'd cared for her wounds. Two years.
Two years, three months, five days.
He would have to forget it - the taste, the scent. Forget it, forget it, forget forget-- like his family, his clan. Like his former mistress, whose face was already obscured when he summoned her to mind. He didn't remember the others. The servant girl he tricked into inviting him home, the woman he took in Aedvans Village, the slave near the Nile, none of them were memorable. Raeger's taste would fade too, with time.
But how much time? A day? A week, a year?
Judas left her to finish eating and took the back way out of the inn. Cyrene's alleys blazed under the sun as brightly as the open streets. Shadows were cast east, but not far enough to shelter him. He pulled his hood up and followed the shadows toward the port. No one would look twice at a corpse there, unless it was female and adorned with symbols of wealth: gold, or henna. Maybe a shiny jewel.
Her taste would be overwhelmed by others, or he wouldn't come back. Nothing else could be done.
................................................................
I would have taken it a bit farther, but the last chapter needs a bit more plot than just an ending, so. :D
By: Amber Michelle
For:
kythaRating: T
Series: Illusion of Memory "canon."
Words: 2717
Other installments:
1: Paradise
2: A Moth to Flame
3: Untouchable
4. Iron and Wine
5. A Scarab of the Sea (god only knows when this will be written)
Notes: this story arc needs a title. For Christmas 2008, just a little bit late. :D
.............................................
Judas stopped counting the years when the people he knew started dying. He didn't see their hair gray or their muscles shrivel around their bones, but when the numbers could be counted more easily in decades - fifty years since the change, sixty-two, seventy-two - he knew it was happening. Two hundred leagues south of Lorien, somewhere in the Sahma Desert under tents made of canvas and animal skin, his brothers were bent by the years, their skin dark and papery. Their teeth would be gone, or worn down so far as to be useless. He was seventeen when his mistress tasted his blood. The youngest of the boys was twelve. Perhaps that child was the only one left.
When he dwelled on it next and realized nearly two hundred years had passed since he saw the tents belonging to his clan, he felt a small twinge in his chest and looked south, trying to picture what the camp must look like if anybody had survived. The image was so faded, so different from the mountain outcrop he crouched behind then, waiting for some sign of travelers to snatch a meal from, he couldn't summon more than a sigh. Then a bright flash of color - a merchant's coat, peeking from beneath a dun brown cloak - caught Judas's eye, and the thought slipped his mind.
It didn't matter. He walked beyond the flow of time.
We've been traveling together two years, Raeger said to him at breakfast. Do you think anybody in Artolia would recognize me now? He didn't remember what he said. It must have been a denial - her skin was burned almost as dark as his used to be, and her hair bleached to a grassy yellow that blended with the sands on bright days, and sometimes looked like gold thread. Even Jelanda's hair wasn't as vivid, but he disliked the comparison because his last memory of the Artolian princess was of her golden curls soaked in blood he couldn't taste.
Raeger was so different sometimes Judas didn't recognize her. When he first dragged her down to the desert she was still soft and pale, colorless, her mannerisms boyish and ungraceful. Egypt was a cruel test, and she walked out of it refined like a fine metal, like a diamond - she ran like a devil, strode across the sands almost as easily as he did. Her arms were stronger from climbing and falling, swinging weapons and throwing rocks and bricks. She even had a good aim.
No. Her own mother wouldn't recognize her. If they returned to Artolia - though he saw no reason to bother - nobody would look at her and see the girl whose likeness was posted on every tavern wall with the promise of ten thousand gold for her capture.
The narrow isles of Port Cyrene's market crowded a whitewashed brick building large enough to be a coliseum. Voices echoed, hammer strikes from the forge and sizzling from the food vendors blended to a dull roar in the background. Straw and dust littered the floor, bits of flatbread and kernels of roasted seeds crunched under his boots. The silk vendor fanned herself behind her red curtain. The tea seller sipped from an earthenware cup beaded with condensation, and his neighbor watched with a scowl. Only the food vendors were busy at the time of afternoon Judas chose to shop - lines of five or even ten stretched down beside the stalls for meat skewers and potato samosas. He paused by the woman frying sweet cinnamon chips, but the line was too long.
He cut across the blue-tiled plaza and slipped between two sandal vendors to a quieter area of the bazaar. Two isles to the left and a long walk down to the east wall brought him to the stand he was looking for.
"My lord." The jeweler bowed over his display, a towel in the hand he rested at his throat. His shop occupied a small enclosure with a metalworker and a smithy that lay dark, separated from the rest of the market by walls of whitewashed screens that stretched to the ceiling. Two men from the city guard loitered at the gateway. "How may I serve you this afternoon?"
Judas reached into his coat, pulled out a wooden token. "I commissioned an item from your partner four days ago - a lapis dangle in a gold setting, with a matching chain and cuff." He allowed the man to take his proof of purchase, examine the writing, and then he pushed past a red curtain into the building, the cypress rectangle left on the display. The other half of the fee hung in a pouch from his belt, and it wasn't a negligible sum.
If he had Raeger repay him for every trinket and token he'd given her the last two years, he would be a rich man all over again. Like any noble's daughter, she had no idea of their value; she understood gold was more expensive than silver, which was more valuable than brass, and she knew the cost of a meal or a night at an inn. She was wont to drop an entire handful of coins - ancient, current, local or foreign - for a single slice of pineapple. He'd given up on expecting any sort of practicality from her, though to her credit she'd erred on the side of avoiding markets altogether after the incident in Aragon that almost got her inducted into slavery. She learned.
Slowly.
Or, to be fair, quickly - but only when she slipped her metaphoric leash and got herself into trouble.
The jeweler came back out with a long cedar box, and after examining his purchase for the proper vertices and hieroglyphs, unhooked the money pouch from his belt and handed it over. The silver coins were counted, weighed, and one bitten before he was allowed to leave. Judas slid the slim box into a deep pocket sewn behind the lining of his coat, clasped the front, and left the bazaar by the nearest exit.
Two years. No-- more. They'd traveled together three months before descending into the desert, two of those bound by a vow to avenge the princess, and the humans ran themselves ragged all the way to Artolia. Even Raeger had barely slept. Do you ever want to go back? he'd asked her that morning, after her observation. She didn't answer right away. Instead she poured tea for herself, diluted the bitter roasted taste with milk and a dollop of honey. What would I do if I did return?
The temple clock told him it was three in the afternoon, and the sun seared the back of his neck where the hair was caught in his collar and parted to show the skin. He felt the pale white of his scalp prickling. His ring was hot around his finger. Cyrene's citizens were smart enough not to be out at this time of the day, when the sun was at its hottest and the cotton ghutra they wore on their heads lent no shelter, their loose robes no reprieve. Judas felt almost as if his body radiated heat for the first time in years. He didn't perspire; his linen shirt didn't stick to his chest beneath his coat as it should have, and his neck wasn't cooled by the hot puff of breeze. The earring rattled in its box with every step.
When he arrived the courtyard of the inn was empty; stableboys slumped in the shade of the surrounding wall and the straggling branches of a pomegranate tree. The stone facade blinded Judas with reflected sunlight. Inside the entryway was lit by a single lamp, the wooden mesh shutters all closed and locked; the common room was empty, and in the heat smelled of old wine and moist wood, though he'd seen them clean it every night since his arrival. He took the stairs two at a time and found Raeger stretched out on the bed when he leaned on the door to push it open, then kicked it closed.
"It's almost worse inside," she said, not bothering to lift her head. Her green silk wrap did cling to the moist skin on her arms, legs, and wrinkled around her hips where it was twisted around by her tossing and turning. "At least at a ruin we'd have shade and wind."
"You'll like this, then." He unclasped his coat and let it slide back, down over his arms. "We're going to pierce your ear again." Raeger started up, head and shoulders lifting from the quilt and her eyes wide. He pulled the box from his pocket and shook it. "I'll order some ice in a minute."
She started to sit up, and got as high as her elbows would prop her before she collapsed onto the pillows again and sighed. She blew a strand of hair from her face and it curled over the cotton covers. "I'll wait."
Judas snorted and threw his coat over the foot of the bed. "Which of us hasn't left the room for two days?" He slid the box onto the table and unhooked the shutters, pushing one open far enough to let the air drift in. It smelled dusty, and the light shined between, a long, rectangular beam across the wood floor. Geometric shapes were cast through the shutters. "We'll be leaving for the Nile again as soon as I can find a ship that'll sail along the coast."
Raeger pulled his pillow to her side of the bed, pushed it behind her, and tried to sit up. "I thought you couldn't travel on water."
"We sailed down the Nile to get away from Sutekh, didn't we?" He untied the cuffs of his shirt and rolled them up past the elbow. There was a leather case with a silver needle and a spool of thread in her pack; he pushed her journal and tea pouch aside to find it, and the heated, grassy scent of chamomile was at least better than sand. "The problem with sea voyages is the lack of food sources. Eventually even sailors will figure out someone is trying to kill them."
He left the case on the table and went downstairs to order a bowl of ice - cubes, not chips or slivers, or slush, and yes it did matter - then returned to their room. This time she was up and sitting at the table, and her afternoon meal had been delivered; she ripped triangles from a round of flatbread, dipped them in honey, then in a mince of nuts and bits of dried fruit. A slim decanter of sweet wine sat at the center of the table, unopened, with two earthenware cups. She shrugged when he lifted a brow.
Judas poured a cup for himself and sipped. A servant knocked at the door and came in, brought the ice and left it on the clear side of the table. When she'd closed the door and her muffled footsteps receded down the hall, he put the cup down and pulled Raeger's hair back into a braid, twisting the hair firmly to keep it from falling over her left ear again. There was nothing to secure it, so he let the ends dangle loose. The candle flame wavered when he brought it to the table, flaring when it met the current of air at the window.
"Can we wait until I'm done?" She stuffed a triangle into her mouth. The nuts crunched audibly.
He opened the box, the leather case, pulled them over to the window. She had patches and squares of muslin pinned inside, and he freed one for the blood. "It won't take long." The ice was only marginally colder than his own fingers. "Try not to bite through anything important, that's all."
She rolled her eyes, and her head with them until he stopped her, set her straight again. Judas chose two long pieces of ice from the bowl and pressed them to the sides of her ear - the upper skin of the lobe needed to be numb, and the cartilage near the top. Raeger flinched at the initial contact.
So trusting. How many times could he have slit her veins in the last week alone? And yet the thought rarely crossed his mind.
He tested her with the needle; can you feel this? What about this?, prodded her until he determined she was numb and held the needle over the flame until it darkened. Then he pulled the skin as far from her head as it would bend and pushed the needle through. Little ruby drops beaded at the end. He wiped the piercing with the muslin and worked the earring in, securing it at the back - a lapis scarab in a gold setting, and a tear of blue dangled from her ear. Judas let the cuff dangle on its gold chain until he pierced the upper curve of her ear so it would secure. Another bead of blood rolled. He swiped it with his thumb and sucked it clean, clipped the cuff closed.
The copper tang spread on his tongue and filled his mouth like vapor - like a fine wine, half scent and half taste, a window to the soul if one felt poetic. Clean, then slightly sweet. Raeger reached back to feel the new addition and asked him something. Are you done or is that it? And when he didn't answer, his name - Judas?
She turned. The shine of her hair made him move, and Judas reached past her shoulder for the cup of wine, only half full. He drained it, poured another, drained that one too. She watched him swirl it in his mouth and swallow hard, a line between her brows, and he didn't care. He poured another cup.
"What's wrong with you?"
Judas looked at her sideways. The gold chain gleamed against the curve of her ear, still smeared red. "Nothing." He drank. "Go clean up." He rubbed his ear to indicate what he meant, then tipped the cup again. He could still taste it. What good was Shirazi wine if it couldn't sweeten his mouth, drive it away? It certainly wouldn't intoxicate him.
Raeger licked her fingers, got up, and disappeared behind him. He heard the scrape of the porcelain basin on its chest and the slosh of water. Her knees hit the floor, her silks slithered.
Two years, and he hadn't once made that mistake, even on the many occasions he'd cared for her wounds. Two years.
Two years, three months, five days.
He would have to forget it - the taste, the scent. Forget it, forget it, forget forget-- like his family, his clan. Like his former mistress, whose face was already obscured when he summoned her to mind. He didn't remember the others. The servant girl he tricked into inviting him home, the woman he took in Aedvans Village, the slave near the Nile, none of them were memorable. Raeger's taste would fade too, with time.
But how much time? A day? A week, a year?
Judas left her to finish eating and took the back way out of the inn. Cyrene's alleys blazed under the sun as brightly as the open streets. Shadows were cast east, but not far enough to shelter him. He pulled his hood up and followed the shadows toward the port. No one would look twice at a corpse there, unless it was female and adorned with symbols of wealth: gold, or henna. Maybe a shiny jewel.
Her taste would be overwhelmed by others, or he wouldn't come back. Nothing else could be done.
................................................................
I would have taken it a bit farther, but the last chapter needs a bit more plot than just an ending, so. :D
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-07 12:22 pm (UTC)It's still sort of a little boggling that Judas GETS lonely, since he's existed so long with basically no one. ALL THIS HUMAN CONTACT CAN'T BE GOOD FOR HIM. And it must suck to make contact with the merchants he needs to, especially if they remember him from, oh, 20 years ago. :P It's nice to know she occupies a space in his non-beating vampire heart.
FFFFF NEXT PART I WANT IT \o/ Raeger always finds Judas disturbing, man! She's just very good at hiding it, esp. recently. :[