Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

Reynard felt naked without his weapons, but Mac had insisted he leave them behind unless he was with someone who knew the local customs. Unnecessary. He had once had a taste for dueling—over cards, over women, over anything at all—but that was long ago. He’d had his fill of killing now. He was more interested in what the world of the living had to offer.

Fascinated by everything he saw, Reynard crossed through a noisy area filled with white tables and chairs. There were gossiping mothers and squalling children. A number of the mothers turned to stare as he walked past, running their eyes up and down him as if he were a horse they wanted to purchase. Out of sheer deviltry, he gave them the same look back, tipping up the glasses to get a better look. They didn’t seem to mind in the least.

The repressive magic was wearing off, and his senses were reeling. The atmosphere of this world was as addictive as the opium poppy. He wanted more and more: to run for the pure satisfaction of weary muscles, to stand under the rushing leaves of an aspen tree. Everywhere he could hear a strange music that seemed to come from the ceilings. Even though part of him knew it was the simplest of tunes, the lilt of it brought sweet melancholy like an unquenchable ache. He wanted to live.

You don’t deserve it. You went through women the way other men ate a bowl of fruit. Once the soft flesh was consumed, it was time to move on to the next. And that was but one of your failings. The Castle taught you duty, self-denial, and honor. Would you turn your back on that now? Would you go back on your bargain?

He could. He had the option of simply walking away. His life would be short, maybe only days, but it would be his—until separation from the urn killed him. Was that what he desired? Was he still the same man who would break an oath to feed his addiction to pleasure?

No, that wild young officer had burned down to dead ash during his first few months in the Castle. After that, horror had become commonplace. He had done terrible things in the name of duty. He’d had to bargain with villains like Miru- kai, trading for the welfare of the weaker inmates the warlords took as slaves. He’d had to wage war against gangs of inmates, and sometimes against his own men. But it was the small things that cut deepest. Constance, Mac’s woman, had adopted a son, and for a time Reynard had been forced to take the youth prisoner. It had been necessary to maintain order in the Castle, but that didn’t make the wrench of separation any easier for mother or son.

Though the Captain of the guardsmen could not show one scrap of what he felt, that episode had nearly broken what was left of Reynard’s heart, and he’d regretted it ever after.

So many, many times, it would have been easy to give in to despair. Discipline was the best shield he had against complete moral collapse. Honor. Duty. Dignity. Death. His father would have been pleased at the change a few centuries of servitude had wrought in his troublesome son.

Reynard walked past a shop filled with televisions and electronics—a land of incomprehensible wonders. Then a tobacco shop that informed him that snuff had fallen out of fashion in the last centuries. Then a bookseller’s—finally, someplace he understood the merchandise—and then he lingered a long time in front of a toy store.

They had tiny, brightly colored knights on chargers, all ringed around a paper castle. A little green dragon grinned down from the parapets.

They’ve obviously never seen a real dragon.

“Are you looking for your own boy?” asked the shop girl.

“No,” said Reynard, realizing he was just another man to her. Someone with an ordinary story, children of his own, nothing grim, nothing bizarre.

He surprised himself by smiling. “I’m really looking for myself.”

She laughed, and it was wonderful. She had a simple, merry, human laugh. A sudden joy overtook him, the sheer seduction of being nonsensical. He laughed with her until he felt his cheeks flushing, suddenly self-conscious.

Rattled, he thanked the shop girl and left the store. He had no money, or he might have bought something to prolong the charade. It was too easy to let himself pretend, to turn his back on the reason he was there. That kind of distraction could be deadly.

Reynard’s steps slowed as he neared the doors that looked out onto the street. Great God.

Most of the creatures he guarded were night dwellers. When they escaped, they fled into the darkness. He chased them in darkness. What he saw outside was something he had not seen in many, many years.

Sunshine.

It slanted through a slim break in the late-afternoon clouds, angling across a roadway and some spindly trees bright with the first flush of spring growth. Long shadows followed the people crossing the street. He blinked, aching to feel the sun on his skin.

He reached the doors, pushed one open, and stepped outside. Still in shadows, he paused under the overhang of the roof. Sunlight splashed the pavement six feet ahead.

If I go any farther, I will never come back.

People passed him, coming and going. They might have been ghosts. He was staring at the rushing cars, deafened by the noise. Like London from his day, the place teemed with a thousand ever-changing lives. Excitement was a scent. It tantalized him, begging him to step forward, to feel the balm of sun and heat and toss himself into that whirling current.

Is my existence so meaningless that I could throw it away so easily?

Perhaps.

His whole body ached with loss, each throb counting again all he had sacrificed—family, friends, love, career, every last simple act of being a free human. His hands shook, a sudden fever creeping over him, along with the urge to vomit—but there had been nothing in his stomach for two and a half centuries. Nausea lurched past with nothing to latch onto. He closed his eyes, shutting out the spears of cruel, seductive light.

I will not run mad.

The sun had always been unattainable. He remembered the tall bookshelves in his family’s leather-and-port-scented library. He’d been all of ten when he’d found his father’s great black book with a six-pointed sun embossed on its cover. The sun was painted in gold leaf. He’d caressed the cover, tracing the bright design with his finger.

“Don’t touch that!” snapped his father, swatting his hand away.

“What does the sun mean?”

“It means we were born to serve. The book isn’t a plaything for little boys. It belongs to the Order.”

His father had put the sun away on a high shelf, and Reynard had seen it no more. The next time he’d seen the symbol, it had been above the door of the vault where the urns were stored. By then, he knew what it was that the Order did.

They snatched the sun away from boys who grew into men.

At last, Reynard walked back inside, putting his back to the fading spring day. Duty, dignity, and death. There was work to be done. It was past time to get back to Ashe and see if she had any ideas where to begin his quest.

He turned, knowing where she was the way a compass knew north. Ever since that day when she’d wiped the blood from his face and urged him to live, he’d known where to find her, even from the other side of the Castle wall. To use the modern phrase, they had a connection.

Reynard crossed the library threshold and his blood ran cold.

Ashe stood in front of the desk, facing a vampire in a long, hooded coat. Two women, one old, one young, stood nearby like gaping sheep. The other clerk, Gina, clung to the counter as if it were the only thing holding her up.

Reynard dropped the paper bag he was carrying. It landed with a rattle, the extra socks and his threadbare, faded uniform spilling onto the carpet.

Heads turned his way, including the vampire’s. In less than a second, the creature realized he was between two enemies.