At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  For a span of heartbeats, her father held her gaze. “Lock the girls up. If you see Boyce, voice your concerns to him,” he finally spoke, dismissing her.

  There was no challenge left to him, and for all the heat of the discussion, she detected no sense of malice or offense. He dismissed her because he was done with her. That was all. Another person might have pressed, might have given the lion’s roar and leapt out with a fury to shake the very earth, until their voice could be heard. It was not the way she had been taught. When she was younger, there had been moments, but now?

  She left him there, passing out the doors and heading for the children’s play. Dartrek waited there, but as he saw her approach, he started, and moved quickly to bar her path. “My lady,” he announced himself, and promptly broke character to take her by the arm. She was too stunned to respond, but Hacket, at her back, saw this and called Dartrek out. The hand promptly fell, but Dartrek leaned disturbingly close.

  “Some of the women was talking, while you was aside. Sara’s lady came—not sure o’ her name. Well, see, she joined the talk…”

  Recovering some measure of composure, Charlotte leaned away again with a stern frown. “Is there a point to this?”

  “Sara went to the witch’s tower. She wanted—”

  The rest was lost as she began to run. A terrible coldness seized her, but her only recourse was to spring. Maker be damned! Curiosity had at last gotten the better of the woman. She knew it; it need not be explained to her. From the very first, Sara had wondered at the mysterious ward they kept in their tower, and they could not rightly keep her a secret. So she had gone at last and walked straight into her family’s greatest enemy, and if Charlotte did not reach her first she did not know what would happen, but she knew it would end in death.

  Servants and men-at-arms howled as she sprinted past, her hitched skirts fluttering behind, and all sense of dignity momentarily stricken. As she reached the tower, she took the steps two at a time, feet lost to a flurry of fabric. From behind, Dartrek’s huffs scuffed the clatter of that frenzied ascent, until both clambered to the witch’s door. Would it be death or salvation? Effort. That was what would matter in the end. The guards shambled aside for her, looking on dumbly as she asked, again and again, who had come and who was within, and all the while the lock slipped and Charlotte nearly bolted into the room.

  What she found there was more unsettling than any death might be.

  Usuri sat as peaceful as a lamb, needle set to thread and the long sheet that served as her bed covering draped across her frail legs. She had been whistling at Charlotte’s entrance—a sound that cut sharply with the squeal of the door’s hinges.

  “So soon?” she piped.

  Breaths came heavily to Charlotte then, unaccustomed as she was to running. Yet she forced her back straight and her head tall as Dartrek wavered in the doorway, eclipsing it with his outline. “I come when—” Charlotte began, eyes making little skirts of the room. There was nothing but the three of them. “When I choose,” she concluded, with no small confusion. And relief. Had the gossipy wench been wrong? If they had made her run for nothing, there would be blood.

  Usuri arched a brow quizzically, and crossed one short leg over the other, leaning forward against her makeshift quilt. A budding bruise yellowed a bared shoulder, where Dartrek had seized and cast her down.

  “She talks with voices, bodiless, with bedside manner—yet still the bird, at times, can make her wonder at the nature of the mad.”

  Then there came a sound so foreign to the little woman it was unsettling: a short, sharp giggle, with all the pitch of a mouse’s squeak. Charlotte was not sure what to make of it.

  “Would you have a seat? I should apologize for the last chirping. It was…” The witch’s lips pursed and seemed to struggle to form around the word. It eventually eased out in a sighed, “wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Charlotte said. A game? she suspected.

  “Would the shadow come and sit? He need not hang in portals. Someone should mistake him for a door, and all too crudely grab his handle.” The witch’s face scrunched up. “And I suspect the thickness would not remove their suspicions of the door.”

  Dartrek started forward and the witch shied back ever-so-slightly into her quilt, but Charlotte dismissed the threat with a gesture. Hesitantly—a trait she did not like to see in her killer—he drifted back to the door and pulled it nearly shut. Nearly. He did not, however, leave the room. Of the moment, she found that irritating for some reason.

  Something rattled as the woman drifted back to the edge of her bed. Charlotte’s gaze twisted back on her, roving for the source, but beneath the quilt, she spied nothing. When she bent down, the witch bent with her, and the little bare feet pulled under the patchwork blanket, but the rattle confirmed suspicion.

  So they had chained her after all. And what good will that do anyone?

  “At last, it seems, illusion dies. No door nor blanket should suffice. The chains dance from dreams and catch the flesh to quick,” the girl noted, almost sadly, her eyes abruptly falling from her benefactor.

  Charlotte shook her head and eased back to her feet as gracefully as she could. “You attacked me.”

  “Aye? And how many blooded sots before you?” The eyes darted back as swiftly, and had the sharpness of blades behind them. “They had not the pleasure of a personal touch.”

  “Pleasure?” She could still feel the silver-eyed serpent coiled against her flesh. It wasn’t real. “Dear girl. As ever, you prove the mad thing. You think your act would spare the boy’s heart for you? By Assal’s blessed balls, woman, haven’t you a sense in your pretty little head? Fictions or realities—are you that dense?”

  For once, she found the witch stricken speechless. Chapped lips parted, strained around some retort, and struggled into nothing. She fidgeted, and Charlotte remembered what happened the last time the girl had done so. There was only so far one could push her. So she turned to go.

  “Had your jibes? Is that all I am? A killer and a sounding board?”

  Perhaps, she supposed. But to two different people—and that was twice what some could offer.

  She did not answer, regardless. Yet even as she reached for the door, she heard voices without. Not now. Please, not now. A frown moved her. The door opened and bared for her a princess.

  “Charlotte!” Sara beamed, her sing-song tone carving the very legs out from Charlotte’s gripping terror. Ducking the posted guards, she darted inside.

  One of the guards moved into the doorway, as if to shield them. “I tried, my lady, but Her Highness insisted…”

  The witch’s head lifted as if to drink. Charlotte could mark it in the ruffle of the cloth. From the storms of her eyes a spark glittered, then widened with knowing. Then the set of her jaw tightened and the storm narrowed to the points of its strike. Assal be damned. She knew. They were dead.

  Charlotte shifted to set skin to stone, and as by an ill wind, the door slammed all too abruptly in their path.

  Assal nothing. Chains be damned as well.

  Sara startled, but Charlotte’s fingers immediately clamped around the handle, giving it a hard tug. A hand tapped against the door, and one of the men outside called to them. She refused to look at the witch. She could feel the smile boring into her back. The question in her friend’s own eyes.

  From the way her shoulders slouched, there was an unusual heaviness to the princess’s bearing. “Charlotte? What on earth are you doing? Not even a good day? Am I so monstrous?”

  “Are not we all, lady?” Usuri answered.

  Charlotte flung the coldest glare she could muster over her shoulder, even as Sara turned to face the witch. Usuri had bent forward and laid a hand against the stones, but she retracted it as the others’ attentions adjusted to her.

  “Goodness. And this is your ward? She is a mess.” There was a low lilt to Sara’s voice that perked up sharply. “But a Naran mess, and that—well, now that is rare enough to be a prize, my friend.”<
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  Usuri clapped her hands together. “Web descend and spiders fend, but to the flighty flies to mend—such weight, such weight, how can mere ripples sate?”

  Riddles and rhymes and flickers of insanity. Just what they needed.

  If Assal be good, if Assal be great, if Assal be anything more than wisp and smoke—come, please Maker, come down and stop this now. Charlotte yanked at the door with renewed purpose, but it had no give, and still she pulled, until she flitted, wild-eyed, back to Dartrek, his great brown eyes gone dark with purpose. His hand had gone to his sword, but she slapped her own against it, and shook her head to dismiss the anger welling in him.

  Sara stepped away from them both, toward the witch, to the sound of another question: “Is this a test?” Dartrek relented and, all the while, took Charlotte’s arm and handed her a dagger, before stomping for the door himself. Slipping the blade tight against her forearm, Charlotte turned to find that some flies, however, did not grasp the web to which they had been bound.

  Sara stepped forward into the very trumps of doom, and bent a knee before them. How many could say they had the pleasure of looking their murderer in the eyes before the end? Perhaps, Charlotte thought for the first time, gunpowder was actually merciful in this way.

  The fly offered the spider a hand, and smiled as she did. “Hello,” the fly softly spoke, “my name is Sara. I do not believe we have yet had the pleasure of a meeting.” Even as she spoke, Dartrek’s bereaved grunts echoing at her back, Charlotte put a hand protectively around the princess’s oblivious shoulder and sidled alongside her, fingers tight to the grip of her blade. She did not want to do it, but if she had to choose between the pair, she would not hesitate.

  Thoughts of before were cast aside. No, she would not let such harm beset a friend.

  It was like a twisting of the tongue. Her eyes flicked between the princess and the witch. Friend. A word she never thought to spare.

  Usuri smiled wolfishly back.

  “It is a princess!” A mote in the eye. “Fair in stature, Durvalle in nature.”

  The princess’s smile faltered with uncertainty, just slightly, and another head tilted. “Smart child. Few can see a person’s nature.”

  “The eyes gave it away.”

  Sara turned her smile on Charlotte with what could only be described as a childish sort of glee. “Such a smart girl you have been hiding from us, Charlotte dear! A disservice, I should say.” It was like a girl that had discovered a stray cat. How dare the world keep it from her.

  “Truly, I am so regretful of that error.” The blade felt heavy in her grip, but Charlotte’s eyes never left Usuri. She did not even bother to make the words sound genuine.

  “Have us a hand, then.”

  Usuri released her quilt for the first time since Charlotte had arrived, offering both hands palms out to the princess. Sara looked delighted at the offer. Then again: how often did someone actually offer to touch a princess? Commonsense was a fine barrier. But not for Usuri. Not for Sara, either. The portrait of porcelain drifted earnestly into the muck and earth. Steel drifted nearer all the while.

  “Is it a game?” Sara peaked, as their flesh met.

  “Game?” Usuri stirred. “No game, no. Merely a touch. Silly people.” At this, she turned to Charlotte. “Always you assume so much more of a touch.” It fell away, with nothing more, and nothing lost. Charlotte could not lower the blade. She looked between the pair of them, uncertain what to make of it. Sara, for her part, merely folded her hands against her own dress, and quietly regarded the girl for a moment.

  “I know you, do I not?”

  “What creature here could know a Naran?”

  “Does she always speak like this?” Sara put to Charlotte.

  “A curse of her people, I am told. Their passions sometimes get the better of them.”

  “Oh.” The princess turned back to the ward, uncertain again. “My condolences to your people, child. For everything.”

  Silence reigned for a moment, before the witch dipped her head and offered in reply: “And I for yours.” But without explanation as Dartrek’s shadow swept over them all.

  “Perhaps after our own war. After this madness…”

  Charlotte squeezed her friend’s shoulder, but looked to Dartrek as she did. The man nodded back at the door, his face a veritable feast of confusion. “Madness is a regenerating thing,” Charlotte offered, nodding toward the door as well. Dartrek shrugged, and made a motion to indicate it was open. “Like a phoenix, when one strand dies, another burns anew.”

  “But if—”

  Shuddering, the witch closed her eyes and drew back her legs. A pale sheen shivered up her flesh, and sweat beaded at her forehead. “Oh no,” she moaned. “No, you do not understand—the dead, the field is littered with the dead.”

  “What?” Sara gasped, scandalized. “What field? What dead?”

  Charlotte already knew. She saw it when she slept. The woman had taken her there, when the clouds of ash still rose to distant cries. Neunhagen. The New Field burned, and suddenly, their war was much more complicated.

  Chapter 13

  Men were adaptable creatures. Time made of them the greatest of creatures, where it had ground others to dust and cobwebs. Yet time was a fickle thing. It had to be coaxed, and loved, and treated fair. Those who sought to seize it rarely ever saw its potential. Adaptation was, after all, part of time, and even men were not so great as to rush its sweet embrace.

  On average, Tessel once quipped, an army could make 25 miles in a day. This was a sound pace, a purposed but unburdened pace, by spring’s gentle light and easy soil. Pushed to the edge of means, the same could make more than 30, but they would hate their master for it, and would never see a battle fresh.

  Words, Rurik realized. They were nothing but words. Even as he sagged in his saddle, he pondered their nature, and that of the man behind them. The honorable man, laid bloodied and stricken with his own lies. This man, so unlike the kindly general of old, ground them down for what must have been 35 miles or more a day for the better part of an octave. An octave of anguish.

  He sensed the taint of ambition and he did not like its taste. It was the taste of death, and more than its share of bodies had dropped in their wake. Whether exhaustion claimed them, or probing Effisians, or even the foul dog desertion, dozens vanished by the day, and Rurik could not find the heart to find out more than that.

  It had been his hope that the pace would cease when they finally crossed that invisible line only men could call a border. Those hopes died unseen. He had not even realized they had crossed the border until he did the math, and the first of Momeny’s line of stone watch towers loomed before them.

  By then, it was too late to howl for reprieve. By then, it was time to worry for the war that was sure to come for them.

  Horsemen began to shadow them from afar. It did no good to chase them. They were always gone before anyone could reach them. Thus watched, and worse still, groping blindly onward, tensions mounted to a fevered pitch.

  Yet Rurik kept himself aloof of the meetings, the plotting, and the squabbles that went with both. He rode the lines and watched as the men pillaged and stole and begged, even, for what they needed. He dipped back with sorties into the rear to ward off rumors of the Effisian pursuit, and to see the many parties of their great whole gradually drift back toward the center as their destination loomed nearer.

  Not once did he see any qualms in the men’s eyes for what they did. Alms or arson, they did it all with the same resolved sort of necessity every man seemed to have fallen into. It was pitiful, and disgusting—and more so, that he could not bring himself to prevent it.

  They might have killed him for trying. And for some reason, that thought still terrified him.

  The unfinished, perhaps. He could almost hear Verdan’s sweet song calling from the south. Tragically, it always sung with Essa’s voice.

  It had been all he could do not to run to its reality when Rowan had brought him wo
rd of her waking…

  Nothing good ever began with: “Before anyone else tells you…” First had come the fight. Then, it seemed, the flu—much the same as it had decimated him.

  And what had that sudden fright led to? Voren. Somehow, the Company had failed to tell him the baker was one of them now. The sight of Voren stooped over Essa, laid against the dirt and the sheets—perhaps he was a violent creature by nature, but he had wished nothing more in that moment than to clobber the whoreson.

  She met his gaze then, for the first time in a long time, but she did not speak. It was the baker that stood, cocking his head back with an arrogant swagger. Rurik might have hit him. The greedy sneer the creature heaved on him hadn’t much helped either.

  “She mends, Matair. Have you not had enough of her already?”

  But Alviss had seen to that problem. Even as Rurik’s foot lifted to cross the threshold, Alviss had cuffed him like a bear did its cub, and drawn him off before any could speak a word against it. When they were far enough away, Alviss shoved him away by the back of the neck.

  Rurik rounded back on him with a feral snap. “Is she with him?”

  The Kuric was still. “What matters?”

  “You—you know why it matters to me. She’s always on my mind. Every day. And when I see her with him…I wasn’t half so scared when they were pulling knives on me, Alviss.”

  Empty palms turned out to him. “All boys feel such. You want not to hear. Fine. But fact is this: her life is hers. It took great hurt. Let her make choices.” Rurik started to interject, but Alviss held up one massive hand to stay him. “Are you sure this is love? Not lust?”

  “Alviss! I of all people should know the difference.”

  “You of…” The giant shuddered once, then barked out a single laugh as dry and biting as an arctic wind. “Boy, you are. These things…you say, muddle? We see what we want seen, all true, when someone else has them. Calm. Treat her as you always have. Inside, she knows it was not you. She will come around.” He stared over Rurik’s head, watching shapes move in the distance. Rurik longed so badly to turn and to look as well, but he could not help feeling this was a test. He fidgeted. “Or she won’t,” the Kuric said at last.