Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “You look terrible,” Flora said.

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “I’m not trying to be nice.”

  The contingent would be departing for Sophia (a place Gemma had never heard of, but that the Protectorate now claimed was behind the ambush at the pumphouse) in less than an hour, and Flora still hadn’t forgiven her older sister for agreeing to go. Gemma had tried to explain that the trip wouldn’t be all that dangerous—she’d be surrounded by soldiers the whole time, and her only jobs would be cooking and cleaning—and that Burns had practically ordered her to come along. But she got the feeling her little sister had guessed the truth: that far from being forced into the mission, Gemma had actually gone to the Bastion of her own volition and begged Burns to allow her to come.

  “Why?” the marshal had asked.

  “Because those boys are my family,” she’d answered. “Somebody has to look out for them.”

  “And that somebody has to be you?”

  There’d been a playful sort of challenge in his eyes, as if her professed selflessness was nothing more than a bad Hallows’ Eve costume. And maybe it was true that she’d grown used to life on the road, that some small part of her found the daily dullness of life in the Anchor as claustrophobic as a coffin. But one truth didn’t cancel out another; it was possible to have both a duty and a desire.

  Of course she felt guilty about leaving her sister behind. But Flora had their grandfather, and her school friends. She would survive.

  Gemma laced up her boots and shouldered her rucksack. “I guess this is it, then.”

  “I guess so,” Flora said. From behind her back, she presented a tiny parcel wrapped up in a paper flyer and tied with brown string. “Here.”

  “What is it?”

  Flora only gestured impatiently at the package. Gemma pulled the string and let the paper fall open. Resting in the center was a small annulus, only it was different from any annulus Gemma had seen before: weightless and thready, yellow as wheat baking in the sun. She had to touch it to understand; it was made of braided hair.

  “I’ve been plucking ’em out for the past couple of weeks,” Flora explained. “And I took a lock of Ma’s hair and wrapped it up in there too.”

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “It was in with Da’s stuff, from some old love letter. Guess she sent it to him when they were courting.”

  Gemma wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye. “I love it,” she said. “And I love you, too. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  They hugged. Then Flora put the string she’d used to wrap the parcel through the center of the annulus and tied it around Gemma’s neck. She stood back to admire her handiwork.

  “Well, at least now you’ve got one nice thing to wear.”

  Gemma worried at the annulus, rubbing its softness between her thumb and index finger, and instinctively turned to look back over her shoulder, as if her eyes might pierce the hundred miles that now separated her from the Anchor, slip through the Eastern Gate and the walls of her grandfather’s house, and find Flora curled up like a kitten in the bay window of the attic, dreaming of flower fairies.

  But all she saw was the company’s rear guard, cracking wise and spitting into the reeds at the side of the road, surrounded by the riotous colors of the season. The cold turn had come five weeks ago and, in that backward way it had, set the world ablaze. Leaves turned the yellow of afternoon sun, then the red of sunset, falling to the ground to rot and dissolve back into the black. Sickle Lake, which they’d had on their left for the last day or so, sparkled with flecks of white gold. In the air, a crispness that didn’t yet cut, a fresh bouquet of pine and lavender, occasionally overwhelmed by the homely pong of skunk.

  Burns said they’d have to keep off the main roads once they made it over the mountains, so as not to telegraph their approach to Sophia, but for now, their progress was swift. On their tenth day out from the Anchor, they reached Borst, at the foot of the Teeth. The snows wouldn’t begin for another month, so the pass was clear.

  There were eighty-eight of them in the contingent: seventy-five members of the Protectorate, one Honor (the Church required that an ordained minister be present with any large company traveling the outerlands), one poet (a long-haired, sallow man named Carlsbad, who had already subjected Gemma to half a dozen of his terrible compositions, including one that he claimed to have written just for her), five merchants, three officers of the people, Clover, Irene (who was finally returning to her home in Eaton), and one poorly qualified cook by the name of Gemma Poplin.

  All the soldiers traveled on foot, though most of the other members of the contingent were on horseback. Gemma didn’t have anything to ride herself, but she was in charge of leading one of the pack horses, an easygoing piebald named Valerie. Already she’d begun to daydream about climbing up onto the animal’s back and falling asleep to the gentle rhythm of her trot.

  “You thinking about Flora again?” Irene said, cantering up beside her and sliding down from the saddle so they could walk together.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Whenever you start playing with that necklace, I know she’s on your mind.” Irene reached over to touch the annulus, her fingers grazing Gemma’s collarbone.

  “You think about your brothers a lot?”

  Irene nodded.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything.”

  “Well, let’s see . . . Anton’s the oldest. He’s just about the smartest person I ever knew, before Clover, that is. Frankie’s the worrywart of the family—weight of the world on his shoulders. Then there’s Terry. He’s a bit of an odd duck, really. Got a mean streak in him a mile wide, but then sometimes he can just be the sweetest thing. And Carlos is the youngest. All he ever does is ask questions.”

  Gemma smiled. “I remember when Michael went through that phase.”

  “Michael?” A second later, Irene covered her mouth in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, Gemma. It just slipped my mind.”

  “That’s all right. You didn’t know him for long.”

  “I still shouldn’t have forgotten.” She put a hand on Gemma’s shoulder and squeezed her through the uniform jacket. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  Her eyes were big and brown, so full of contrition it almost looked like an act. Sometimes when Gemma was talking to Irene, she found it difficult to focus on anything other than the girl’s physical presence. There was something magnetic about her, a beauty that was equal parts glamour, charm, and mystery. People had been telling Gemma how pretty she was all her life, but pretty was to beautiful as perfume was to fresh flowers, and she would’ve traded her looks for Irene’s in an instant.

  Maybe that was why she always felt a vague sort of envy when she saw Clover and Irene together—which was almost all the time now. It seemed the two of them could hardly stand to be away from each other for more than five minutes at a stretch.

  “Of course,” Gemma said. “It was an honest mistake.”

  “Anyway, all I meant to say was that I miss my brothers like crazy.”

  “Well, it seems you’ve found a decent enough replacement.”

  “How’s that?”

  Gemma gestured over her shoulder, toward Clover.

  “Oh, him! But Clover’s a much better kisser than my brothers.”

  Gemma wrinkled up her nose. “Ew.”

  Irene laughed. “Isn’t that what you Anchorites think about us country folk? That we’re all marrying our cousins and such?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like that,” Gemma said, but of course she had, and pretty soon she was laughing too.

  “Don’t you girls know this is a serious military engagement?” Clive said, coming up behind them. “No laughing allowed. And no secrets. What’s so damned funny?”

  “Nothing,” Gemma said, but one look at Irene set her to laughing all over again.

  It took t
hem almost two weeks to make it through the mountains. In that time, their company shrank by three—a soldier who broke his leg trying to run down a wild goat and had to be left in a nearby village to recover, and two Church officials with business in Corning. From there, the contingent headed southeast toward Trinity, where the Northern and Southern Tails separated. The weather turned colder as the invincible verdure of the evergreen forests around the mountains gave way to the mortal trees of the lowlands, bruised golden by the changing of the season. Clover, who was engaged in some sort of research project for the Library, kept them all informed about the minutiae of this ecological shift.

  Gemma had assumed that traveling with the Protectorate would be like traveling with Honor Hamill’s ministry, but it turned out to be an entirely different experience. Any time the contingent stopped, there was a never-ending list of chores to attend to—watering the horses, seeing to the soldiers’ swords, finding wood for the fires, rinsing out smelly undershirts and scouring the mud from boots and preparing meal after meal after meal and wearing a smile on her face the whole damn time. (“Keeping up morale is the most important part of your job,” Burns had explained.)

  In spite of all that, she enjoyed the rhythms of military life. There was an honesty to her exhaustion at the end of the day, a purity of purpose she’d missed during her time in the Anchor.

  The contingent skirted around Trinity and began marching across the wild territory between the Tails, hoping to remain undetected by Sophia for as long as possible. There was no sign of civilization out here but the occasional abandoned homestead—barn open to the elements, silo scoured clean by mice, gravestones garlanded with dried-out reed annuli.

  One evening a few days later, the contingent stopped to camp in the middle of a vast sagebrush plain, stained here and there with patches of purple wildflowers. Gemma was watching Clover and Irene, who’d wandered a little ways off to marvel at a desert willow. Clover plucked a bloom off the branch and gently slipped it behind Irene’s ear.

  “Daughter’s love,” Clive said under his breath, coming to stand beside Gemma. As always, Garrick was right behind him. “It’s enough to make a man sick.”

  “I swear he spent two hours last night just rubbing her goddamn feet,” Garrick said. “But maybe he’s getting two hours of something in return.”

  “Something like what?” Gemma teased.

  Garrick smiled angelically. “I would never sully your delicate ears with filth, Gemma.”

  She still hadn’t decided how she felt about Clive’s friend. He was an incorrigible flirt, but that could be fun sometimes; she only wished he wouldn’t stare at her quite so much. “Well, Irene’ll be back in Eaton soon enough. I suppose we should let ’em have their fun.”

  Clive grunted, a bad habit he’d picked up from Burns. “I still don’t like the way she’s got him wrapped around her finger.”

  “My daddy always said you should never judge a man for anything he does in the name of love,” Garrick said. “Of course, he spent a week in the stocks for putting it to a married woman, so he may not be a trustworthy source of wisdom on the subject.”

  Gemma had a couple of follow-up questions to Garrick’s confession, but just then, all of them were distracted by the sound of someone shouting. It took a few moments before anyone was able to locate the source: a lone man on horseback, riding toward the campsite from the east. He was repeating something—a single, unintelligible word—over and over again. As he came closer, Gemma recognized him as the forward scout who’d gone out that morning.

  An arrow protruded from his shoulder like a flag of conquest, its fletching shivering in the breeze.

  “Wesah,” he said one final time, then slumped sideways and slid to the ground.

  2. Clive

  “THE IDIOT DREW HIS SWORD,” Clive said. “Whole thing’s on him, far as I see it.”

  “He was scared,” Gemma argued.

  “That’s no excuse—”

  Just then Burns finally swept out of his tent. For the past hour, he’d been inside with the contingent’s medic and Nathan Federle, the scout who’d gotten himself skewered by the Wesah.

  “He dead?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “No,” Burns replied. “But he will be if he ever wakes up. Everyone gather round!” The marshal kept talking as the contingent drew close enough to hear. “So that shit-for-brains in there just made us an enemy, and that enemy is currently sitting smack-dab between us and where we’re trying to go. We’ve got no choice but to head out there tomorrow morning and try and make nice.”

  “Can’t we go around them?” Garrick said.

  “Then they’ll just be behind us. And only a fool marches into trouble with trouble already breathing down his neck.”

  Honor Gordon, who’d been summoned from his tent in case Nathan needed last rites, gave a loud harrumph. Clive didn’t much like the man, who seemed to think his primary role in their company was criticizing those who weren’t comporting themselves in a godly fashion.

  “You have something to say, Honor?” Burns said.

  “Well, perhaps it’s not my place to weigh in on this, but I’m a little confused. Are you honestly afraid of a few heathen women in loincloths? I thought you were soldiers.”

  “We’ve got nothing to gain from making trouble with the Wesah, Gordon.” The marshal’s voice thrummed with barely contained hostility.

  “So what are you planning to do? Beg them to spare our lives?”

  “Oh, it won’t just be me,” Burns said, allowing a smile of satisfaction to creep across his face. “You’ll be coming too.”

  “Me?”

  “That’s right. Along with our lovely ladies and whatever food we can spare. Speaking of which, will someone get dinner started already? I’m starving.”

  With that, the marshal ducked back into his tent.

  “Did he say ‘ladies’?” Clive said to Garrick.

  “Sounded that way.”

  Clive stood up and strode in after Burns. The marshal’s tent was dark, lit only by a single lantern. It smelled of rosewater and softleaf. Nathan was laid out on a pile of blankets in the corner. Burns had already taken a seat nearby, watching as Waverly, the contingent’s medic, strapped some sort of poultice to the wounded soldier’s shoulder.

  “What lovely ladies?” Clive demanded.

  “Are you unclear about which members of our company are women?” Burns asked. “Or is it more that you’re questioning their loveliness?”

  Someone else entered the tent. Clive turned to find his brother, and just behind him, the two ladies in question.

  “You aren’t trading them away,” Clover said. “I won’t let you.”

  Clive couldn’t help but smile. Clover was capable of many things, but intimidating Burns wasn’t one of them. “If I ever offer the Wesah a human being,” the marshal said, “it’ll be for something a lot more valuable than safe passage.”

  “Then what do you want us for?” Gemma asked.

  “If I show up there with a bunch of soldiers, it’ll look like an attack. You and Irene make it clear we’re coming peaceful. Besides, the Wesah get along better with women.”

  “Well, they’re not going anywhere without me,” Clive said.

  “Or me,” Clover added.

  “Or me,” Garrick said. At some point, he’d slipped inside the tent too.

  Burns sighed. “Only because you three and Honor Gordon are the least threatening men in this whole contingent. Just wear your civvies, all right? And no swords, for fuck’s sake. I doubt you’d know what to do with them anyway.”

  Clive was glad to have a horse beneath him again; the day was shaping up to be the coldest of the year so far, and the animal’s warmth was a welcome convenience. According to Nathan, the Wesah encampment was about four miles east of their campsite: no more than an hour at an easy trot. They rode in silence at first—Burns’s preferred mode of travel—but it wasn’t long before Gemma started talking.

  “So what exactl
y are the Wesah?” she asked. “I’ve seen a few of them over the years, but I’ve never actually met one.”

  “Godless heretics,” Honor Gordon answered. “That’s all you need to know.”

  “I don’t wanna tell you your business,” Burns said, “but you’re wrong about that. They got plenty of gods.”

  “There is only one God, Marshal Burns, and his aspect is threefold. First—”

  “We’re here for a sortie, not a sermon, Gordon. Besides, I think we’ve all heard that one.”

  Honor Gordon gave a little grumble before going silent.

  “The Wesah aren’t to be underestimated,” Burns said. “That’s the most important thing to know about them. They travel in these small bands they call naasyoon, which can be anything from a handful of warriors to a few hundred, and each one can wander pretty wide. Captured warriors claim their people cover the whole continent.”

  “Sounds like a bunch of bullcrap to me,” Clive said.

  “How many of these naasyoon are there?” Gemma asked.

  “I bet if you asked them, they’d say it’s as many as stars in the sky, or grains of sand on a beach,” Garrick scoffed.

  “And maybe it’d be the truth,” Burns said. “Never assume you know something about something you know you don’t know nothing about.”

  Garrick frowned. “What?”

  “Anyway,” Burns continued, “all the naasyoon meet up once every two years, down south by the ocean. They call it the tooroon. It’s the only time most of them see their chief.”

  “There’s just one?” Clive said.

  “Well, each naasyoon has its own leader, but then there’s one chief above all the rest. No matter who she is, they call her Andromède.”

  “Is it true the Wesah keep male slaves?” Irene asked.