Childe of my Heart ~ Chapter Thirty-six
by Shanyah
 

Being something of a self-absorbed autocrat, Tresten would have been amazed to learn that life jogged merrily along outside the walls of his Trail. Marriages, births and deaths happened, townships thrived and trade flourished. Adventurous souls scrambled up his mountain’s craggy mantle, struggling with treacherous vertical climbs for the sake of reaching the plateau half-way up where a lake waited.

Named Sorrow for it’s tear-drop shape, the lake was vast, its pointed end wedged between two mountain walls. Blue-green conifers sloped to the lake’s farthermost shores, staring across the glass clear surface to the white water created by the melted glaciers that thundered over a mountain shelf into Sorrow’s tip. Superstition had it that a swig of Lake Sorrow increased virility ten-fold; it occurred to none of the adventurers that their virility likely stemmed from the monthly mountaineering expeditions.

So it was with Spike and Xander. They had scaled uphill paths, reaching a plateau on the night of their conversation in the asymmetrical alcove. On their flatland awaited, not a lake, but companionship; nights spent on Xander’s balcony playing card games and cackling at some dry comment one or the other made. Beavis and Butthead, Dawn called them.

As two men who’d arrived at Everest’s pre-summit camp might do, Spike and Xander rested. They took a breather from voracious sex and breathed in the freshness of the parity found in fellowship. Weeks elapsed, the lube gathered dust, the cards part-took in more action than actors in a Tarantino movie and Spike and Xander’s companionship matured, became the comfort of a well-worn slipper.

From their pre-summit camp, Spike and Xander looked down at the fissures and tentative footholds on the path they’d travelled. They saw that dominance and submission were at the centre of each fissure that had nearly spelt their end and nowhere was dominance more hotly contested than in bed. So they sat on Xander’s balcony, platonic friends building Jenga towers while crippled by severe cases of blue balls and all because they’d talked, said things out loud. As Xander’s superstition had it, saying things actualised them, supposedly made them real and neither man quite had the valour to test out how real was Xander’s surrender, or how total was Spike’s assertion that submission was the only thing he sought from Xander. 

Safer to plateau than to push for the cloud-piercing summit, they thought. It did not occur to them that the doubt-free glances and silent communion they shared, the playful tussling in the sawdust pool and skimming touches outside it – these acts of friendship only nourished the sexual energy they were trying to starve through abstinence.

The Baths, conversely, had reached the summit of its notoriety. The Fifth Rankers nicknamed it ‘The Arches’ and prowled outside, invidious as they watched the activity in the multi-arched reception hall on the rare occasions the double doors were left open. Hearsay spread from Fifth Ranking to rankings above and below, wagging tongues ignited by the secrecy shrouding ‘The Arches’.

It is an exclusive club and even Amo Tresten has to apply for membership, some said.

The Unbonded of The Arches do not toil but banquet incessantly and cavort in silken dress. Perhaps I too should cast my insignia band into the sewers and seek refuge at Amo Spike’s doors.

Have you seen their insignia? Gone are the days when a band told you its wearer’s Rank. Now it tells you who belongs inside The Arches and who does not. Master Tresten does not.

The grass is not always greener in the other Bath, a few smiled slyly. Miguel - but yes you know him, he’s Tresten’s self-important Furnace Lighter. Well, Miguel went into The Arches many weeks ago and has not come out. It must be the graveyard shift he is on.

These whispers eventually floated up to Tresten and he drank a two litre carafe of wine in the fifteen minutes it took him to dictate an amendment of law to the furiously scribing Sargo. Tresten delivered the parchment himself, giving it Jude to carry in order not to appear so far fallen from his status by doing a Runner’s work.

“The Vampire mutilates Tresten’s property and Tresten is not pleased. Jude? Jude!”

Jude doubled his speed, hard pushed to maintain the three steps to Tresten. “Mi Amo?” He puffed.

“Must Tresten permit The Vampire to corrupt his insignia and dispose of his workmen?”

“I do not-”

“Treason! The Vampire commits treason and those who shield him may consider themselves bonded to his fate.”

Spike’s doormen heard Tresten coming, saw the power walk and felt the pillars groan ode to their Master. The six bouncers bowed out of Tresten’s way, none of them able to meet the aggressive stares of the Earners who had been trying to menace their way into the gated community.

*    *    *    *

Dawn twirled the broadsword in the air, preparing for her double-handed grip. Her left hand grasped the sword handle a split-second too late, giving her five sparring partners the opportunity to converge on her and wrestle her to the ground. Spike watched the scrum in the pool and paced to the porch where Fred and Xander looked on, tattered around the edges from their one-on-one training sessions.

“Help me!” Dawn called out, “Help!”

“Let her up,” Spike said, coming to poolside.

The Select immediately complied and climbed out of the pool, leaving Dawn to her under-the-breath mumbling. She shook her head, scattering sawdust onto her sawdusted shoulders and sent Spike a glance. He flicked his Zippo alight to oppose the sub-zero glower from the pool.

“Couldn’t you find hypo-allergenic padding for the floor, Mi Amo? My allergies hate sawdust.” Dawn scratched her elbows and bent to scratch the back of her knee.

“What’s up?” Xander asked, stopping beside him.

“She’s allergic to losing,” Spike said.

“I’m dying a hivey death! Your food journal idea didn’t work Fred. Whap me on the head with an anvil next time I even look like I’m about to listen to you again.”

Spike went down into a squat, balancing on the balls of his feet. “Let’s have a look at these hives, Bit.”

Dawn rolled back her sleeve and pointed her elbow at him, “See them? Big, aren’t they?”

Spike looked at the dusting of goose bumps on her elbow and tried not to smile. “Enormous. D’you have hive cream in your first aid box, Fred?”

“I’ll go look,” Fred all but nudged and winked.

“They’re on my lip too,” Dawn pushed out her lower lips, showing blisters along its inner surface, a line of glossy red pin-heads.

“They look sore,” Xander said with a small wince.

“They are and I think I’ve got them on my back. It itches worst,” Dawn hiked the back of her tunic.

Slightly raised leathery scales jostled for space along her spine. Grey hitch-hikers making in-roads from her back-bone to crowd between her protruding ribs. Trying to fill the hollows created by weight loss, the scales were like ticks bleeding Dawn thin and pale.

Spike looked at the ground, a muscle tic in his clenched jaw. He’d sensed the off-ness in her long ago, had said she was the first of his troubles. Being near her wound him up chronic, made his gums itch and it was down to the scales. Demon activity trampling all over L’il Bit and he had no clue how to stop the possession, if it was possession. Blank on all counts, familiar vinegary taste of failure.

“Is this another little thing you never got round to mentioning, Fred?” He accused. “You’re with her all the time, can’t have missed it.”

“How could…?” Fred shook her head in a slow arch of denial. “We don’t shower together, we get dressed behind the shoji-screen back in the room and we generally don’t strut around the Pool House stripped to the waist like you guys. How could I have seen it?”

“Is it bad?” Dawn glanced over her shoulder, “Xander?”

Xander jumped into the pool, tugged the hem of her tunic from her fingers and smoothed it down. “Dawnie, I don’t think it’s hives.”

“This one girl in my class has eczema,” she faced Xander. “She scratches it with a pencil all the time.” Dawn snuffled a giggle. “Anyone got a pencil?”

“Dawn-”

“It’s eczema, Xander,” she smiled brightly. “We’ll find some cream or, or a spell – Jude does spells and…Spike!”

On that shriek, she tossed her broadsword to Spike as he rose up from crouching. He caught the sword and sped off in the direction opposite to where Dawn was running. Leap out of the pool, twist of her body in the air, and Dawn was sitting on her black, leather-bound book at poolside, white-faced as she watched Spike home in on the garden’s archway. Tresten loomed under the archway and Spike thrust his sword arm forward, sinking the blade into Tresten’s abdomen to the hilt. Without flinching at the savage spearing, Tresten closed his fist on Spike’s shirtfront, lifted him to eye-to-eye height, slapped the game off his face and flicked him away.

Fred, Xander and Dawn gaped.

Spike careened through the air, bones juddering as he hit the pool floor. He groaned, feeling like one of the bits of sawdust that swirled in his vision – an annoying spec on Tresten’s collar.

Tresten sauntered to poolside, pulled the broadsword out of his abdomen and threw it at Spike’s feet. “Was this Spike’s method of eliminating Tresten’s Earned?”

On his feet, Spike dusted the pale-yellow film of dust off his T-shirt. “Don’t know what you’re on about, Testy.”

“You executed Tresten’s Earned without due regard for Tresten’s Law.”

Spike mustered a smirk. “Yeah? Prove it.”

“Tresten cannot.”

“Tresten must not slander, ‘cause it’s slander if you can’t prove it. Not to mention rude to barge in on family time.”

“Be warned that your treason carries a greater penalty than Tresten’s poor manners,” Tresten cautioned with a grin.

“Treason is it?” Spike sniggered for lack of offence. “Exile me then. That’s right, throw me and my humans out of your Trail.” Noting Tresten’s withered grin, Spike pushed his advantage. “Look mate, I’m your Resident Peaceful. You tell me what’s going on with Dawn and I’ll make like you didn’t spit on our agreement by coming in here uninvited.”

“Is the child not herself?” Tresten glanced at Dawn with casual interest. “And the boy? Has the young insurgent recovered from your smacking of his delightful bottom?”

“Voyeur as well as Town Circus and Post Master General? Where do you get the time, Tresten?” Spike countered, far from amused.

“Were it that your sword play proved as stimulating as your wordplay. Tresten admires a worthy opponent,” Tresten took the parchment from Jude and pushed it into Spike’s face. “This decree takes force with immediate effect.”

Spike snatched the magnolia parchment, broke its wax seal and scanned it. “An extra-ordinary act of parliament in honor of moi? Sweet.”

Tresten stiffly turned to Jude. “Tresten has a sudden need for his Fifth Ranking Bath staff. You will direct them to my own facilities on Seventh Ranking.”

Jude’s eyes widened. “All of them, Mi Amo?”

“My need is great,” said Tresten.

Spike rolled up the parchment and deliberately authoritative over Tresten’s Runner, tapped Jude’s knee with it. “Uh, before you start on the directions, what’s the what on my consignment? I put the order in yonks back, thought you’d have delivered by now.”

Jude picked at his warts. “As I counselled at the time, the very specific nature of your order required me to make special arrangements with the Pirates. Such arrangements take time.”

“I want my stuff,” Spike said, healthy measure of belligerence. “Not going to wait forever.”

“The Pirates set out three nights ago and are expected to return tonight, Amo,” Jude said.

Tresten slid Spike a milk-curdling glance. “What stuff do you refer to?”

Loving Tresten’s sour glance, Spike shrugged a shoulder, grinned. “Just stuff.”

Tresten tugged on his earlobe, seemed to be attempting to dismember himself. “Jude?”

“Master Spike requested a few personal items from his home dimension,” Jude said. “Am I to proceed with the delivery, Mi Amo?”

“The Vampire’s rank licences him to order goods at his discretion. Though it pains me to say it, you are to serve him as you would serve any other Earner of his rank,” Tresten smartly turned for the exit. “Spike, I will respect the tenets of our contract if you’ll escort my Bath staff off these premises unharmed and within the hour.”

“Is that a promise?”

Tresten startled the assembled by throwing his head back and guffawing good-naturedly. Deep, belly laugh. “You have Tresten’s word and his word is his bond. It is cast in stone, my friend.”

Mwa-ha-ha, all the way out of The Arches like some damn comic book villain, Spike thought. 

He escorted Tresten’s depleted team of Bath staff to the gates within the hour. Potential spies gotten rid of, he ought to be cracking open the bubbly. But he didn’t feel much like celebrating, not with Indestructo for a nemesis and spineless gits for bouncers. Digging balled fists into his duster pockets, he rocked back on his heels and sized up his doormen.

“Leave your bands on the counter and get out.”

The doormen gave up their bands, but clustered just inside the open doors. “Amo, it is worse, far worse to have no band than to wear the many colours. The Earners will make sport of us,” one spoke up.

“I should be so lucky,” he shoved one after another out the door.

He was in luck, slaughter ensued. He was swinging the doors closed on it when a muscled arm insinuated itself between the doors. “Move it or lose it,” he snarled to the Grang’al whose arm was in danger of removal.

The Grang’al endangered his head and shoulders, squeezing them between the partially closed gates. “Forgive me, but the Trail is agog with talk of your humans.”

Spike stayed the doors. “Oh yes?”

“The child is described as a marvel, the woman as tactical, the boy stubborn to pain and the Amo humbling in his unreserved defence of his Earned,” The Gangr’al said. “There are many amongst us who would pledge gold to watch the breath-taking Quartet in combat.”

Aw stop you silver-tongued devil you, Spike thought with a grin. But gold, “gold doesn’t talk. Plus it’s heavy to lug about,” he said, dismissing his grin and the Gangr’al with a push on the gates.

“I bring gold in a purse woven of words.”

Hope for Dawn made Spike’s knees weak and his eyes water. He opened the gates.

*    *    *    * 

Fred stood on the War Room’s hearth, reading the parchment out loud. Dawn sat on a couch, the black book on her lap and Xander beside her. Spike sat on an arm of the armchair, feet on the seat, chin on his knees. The decree was full of ‘Thou shalt nots’ and precise consequences of performing the ‘shalt nots.’

“He didn’t even bleed,” Dawn interrupted the reading. “Tresten didn’t even…we’re so gonna get minced.”

“Charming.”

“We should recall the Unbonded bands, now Spike, we oughtta call a meeting and take the bands back.” Fred knelt at the table, spread the parchment out and re-read, “Earners shall not deface or in any way mutilate Rank Insignia.”

“This isn’t about bands Fred,” Spike said. “Other Earners wear defaced insignia. Want hard evidence go see Rhiana’s ankles.”

“Who’s Rhiana?” Dawn rounded her eyes at Xander.

“Let’s not explore that,” he massaged his temple. “Do we recall the bands, Spike?” 

“What, wave the white flag? Screw that. The bands stay.” Anger from the humiliation in the pool coursed through Spike’s veins. “I’m adding an hour to sparring time and two hours to sleep time. I’m making every other Monday open night, gonna let Earners bring in their fighters for us to go toe-to-toe with.”

Fred shot her hand up into the air, “Uhm, can I…question please?” Spike nodded and she asked. “We’re going to be sparring an extra hour a day and well…is it necessary to fight outsiders on top of that?”

“We’ll fight ‘cause we got nothing else to trade but our fists and trade is the way to get things done in the Trail.” Spike uncoiled from the armchair and paced to the fireplace. “We need outside blood, people who aren’t on the payroll and who won’t be afraid to go for the kill. Think of it as motivational sparring.”

An aghast three-way look passed between the humans, Spike pretended not to see it. They had to start killing again, only way to get them into top form. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” He asked.

“The bad news,” Xander said.

“The first Open Night is tonight. Us four against as many Earned as it takes to entertain their Gangr’al Master for a half hour.”

“And the good news?” Dawn whispered.

“Our prize is information on your ailment,” Spike went over to Dawn and took her hand in both his, squeezing as though to lend her strength. “We’ll fight and win because that ain’t a rash you’ve got on your back. Sorry sweetheart, but it’s not.”

CHILDE OF MY HEART ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

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