Watcher of the Dead

by J. V. Jones

  Bram took the sword. Its weight was shocking. Seizing the grip in both hands, he let the point rest on the ground. The tooled leather of the scabbard blackened as it soaked up rainwater.

  The detail did not go unregarded by Robbie. “Speak and get the hell off my land.”

  Time slowed. Bram inhaled mist from the lake, held it, held it, and then used it to become someone else. He told his half-brother how to take the Withyhouse, how it was weakest where it appeared strongest, how a portion of turf abutting its infamous northern wall disguised the underground doors that were an escape hatch for horses and livestock in the event of invasion or fire. Bram felt a sense of expansion as he spoke. Right here on the Banks of Blue Dhoone Lake, the future of the clanholds was changing. He, Bram Cormac, was changing it.

  With information.

  You didn’t have to be strong or skilled or a leader of men to be powerful. You just had to acquire knowledge: trade it and deal it out. It was a revelation. Clan valued force. Clan chiefs ruled by force of law. Cleverness was not praised or rewarded. At Wellhouse, Withy and Castlemilk you could learn the histories and warriors might say, “Let’s ask Bram about the last time we attacked the Scarpehouse—he knows his stuff.” That was the most you could hope for, the occasional request for advice. You couldn’t make a name for yourself out of it—unless you were a fearsome warrior first. One-Armed Gregor was famous for being clever, but he was just as famous for wielding the great war hammer Wallbreaker one-handed. Clever with might could be celebrated. Clever without might was sneaky and unclannish.

  That was, Bram realized, the difference between him and Robbie. Robbie was not opposed to lies and double-crossing, but because he was a fine hammerman it didn’t hurt his reputation. That was what allowed him to stand there, looking at his brother with disgust.

  Bram suddenly felt tired. The air that had puffed up his lungs slipped out. He had one more thing to say and he thought he’d better get it done. “Make sure the tower watch doesn’t shoot me as I leave.”

  Robbie stroked his chin. “It’s hard to tell friend from foe in the dark. People get shot by mistake every day.”

  “Tell them to make a special effort. Their chief might need me again.”

  Robbie recognized the promise of further information when he heard it. “Brother.” The word was an acknowledgment and a barb.

  Bram pumped the handle of the sword with both hands. With a single, unlovely swing, he raised the point off the ground and rested it flat against his shoulder. At his right hip, both his wrists were straining under the pressure of being fully flexed. Bram fought the urge to make the adjustment necessary for comfort. He didn’t want Robbie to see him fumbling.

  Caving his chest forward to balance the weight of the sword, Bram nodded his farewell.

  Robbie eyed him coolly and turned away. The weighted fabric of his cloak snapped as he walked toward his house. You could still see the imprint of the sword on his back.

  Bram tucked his head down and left.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sinking into the Swamp

  “YOU’LL EXPLODE IF you eat one more of those.”

  “If you wrinkle your nose any harder it’ll stick,” Chedd Limehouse replied to Effie Sevrance. “And I’d rather be exploded any day than pig ugly.”

  Effie Sevrance unwrinkled her nose instantly. Chedd was right. Exploded was better than ugly. “Hand me one,” she ordered, pointing to the apple pastries. “Quick.”

  Chedd’s hand circled above the platter like a bird of prey. The pastries, embedded with hazelnuts and shiny with honey, all looked the same to Effie, but not to Chedd. Chedd’s eye could discern infinitely small differences in size, weight and toppings. He seized one and handed it to Effie.

  “More nuts,” he said tersely.

  Effie raised the pastry in toast. “To Clan Gray. Where the living is good.”

  Chedd motioned to the unshuttered window high above Effie’s head. “So’s the dying.”

  It was hard to eat her pastry after that. Chedd took another one—his fourth—and folded it whole into his mouth. He chewed methodically without pleasure, getting the job done. They were sitting in one of Clan Gray’s cave-like pump rooms. Thick clouds made afternoon as dark as sunset. The frogs were already croaking. She and Chedd were on pump duty, but the man who was supposed to be watching them, wasn’t watching—he’d left, returned with pastries and left again—so that meant they were doing nothing at all. They were seated on high iron stools that were half a foot deep in water. Four paddles looking very much like giant wooden spoons jutted from the exterior walls at chest height. They were the pump shafts. She and Chedd were meant to be working them. According to Tull Buckler—the clansman who had left them unsupervised—the pumps needed to be manned day and night “else the entire roundhouse’ll sink into the Stink.” The Stink was the marsh that surrounded Clan Gray for thirty leagues in all directions. Hell’s Moat was another name for it. “The devil’s sucking us down,” Tull had informed them earlier. “We have to work to stay put.”

  Effie shivered. “We’d best get pumping,” she said to Chedd.

  Chedd slid from the stool and plonked into the water. “Right then.”

  “Gloves on,” Effie warned him, nodding at the iron table where two pairs of boarshide gloves lay beside the pastry platter. “Blisters kill, remember.”

  Chedd groaned but obeyed. At eleven he was two years older than she was but in matters of safety Effie Sevrance was the boss.

  The gloves were as stiff as planks and about a hundred sizes too big. “Bear claws,” Effie cried, seizing the pump handle.

  “Udder hands,” Chedd shot back, making her laugh.

  Within five minutes they were sweating. Effie had to swing her entire weight onto the pump handle to force it into motion. The sluice gate opened as the handle depressed and water spurted into the swamp.

  “Seeps back in as quick as we pump it,” Chedd said. “Walls might as well be sponge.”

  It was true enough. After an hour of pumping, the water level was no lower. Rings of black crud circled the pump room wall, marking past flood levels. The highest ring fell just an inch below the ceiling and a foot above the window. How had they managed to pump that one out?

  “It’s smells bad,” Chedd said mildly. “Like cabbage poached in fart water.”

  Effie nodded. You had to hand it to Chedd Limehouse: He had a way with words.

  “How long are we supposed to do this for?” Chedd asked.

  “Don’t know.” Effie was breathless. Pumping was a lot easier for Chedd. “I suppose Buckler will come and get us sometime soon.”

  “Nah, Eff. With all that’s going on he’s likely forgot.”

  Halting the pump, handle down, Effie glanced at the window. “Should we sneak up and take a look?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “No.” Chedd frowned so hard cheek fat and forehead fat met in front of his eyes. “Nothing to see. Just some weird clannish death rites. No reason for us to look.”

  Effie released the pump, sending thick, oily water rushing over the top of her boots. A horn sounded in the distance, its lone note blowing south from the Isle of Grass. Yesterday there had been a death in the clan and today they were disposing of the body. Every clan had their own way of dealing with their dead. At Blackhail they rubbed corpses with milk of mercury and laid them on open ground. At Castlemilk corpses were cut in two and sunk in grave pools, and at Scarpe they were doused in alcohol and set alight. She’d heard the ashes were fed to the poison pines.

  “What do they do at Bannen?”

  Chedd pumped and didn’t answer. Bannen was his home clan. He’d been abducted from the north bank of the Greenwater while out turtling. Effie had been taken a few days later on the Wolf. Waker Stone had kidnapped both of them and floated them upstream to Clan Gray. They’d been here twenty days now and Effie guessed that it bothered Chedd more than it did her. Chedd had been a warrior-in-training at Bannen. When warriors we
re captured they were supposed to escape.

  Understanding that Chedd didn’t want to talk about Bannen, Effie nodded at the window. “Why do you think so many of them die?”

  Chedd shrugged. “It’s Gray. They’re cursed.”

  Effie continued nodding. “Two died last week. A baby and a three-year-old.”

  “It’s a newborn they’re sending off tonight.”

  “Oh.” Effie stopped nodding and pumping and began thinking. Swamp water cooled her feet. “Perhaps the babies are born sickly.”

  “Or they get sickly.”

  Effie examined Chedd’s face. The pillowy cheeks and folded-blanket jawline caught your attention straightaway, but if you looked longer you noticed the eyes. They were deep brown and all sorts of smarts lived behind them.

  “Stop pumping,” Effie ordered.

  Chedd complied, halting the paddle midstroke. He was breathing heavily. Big oval stains had spread from his armpits to his blue linen shirt.

  “Do you think that’s the curse?” Effie asked him. “That Gray’s children get sickly and die?”

  Chedd shrugged. The motion squirted a gallon of water into the swamp. “That’s what I’d been thinking.”

  Effie squinted at him. When Chedd came up with a theory before she did something was very wrong with the world. “We have to find out for sure.”

  “How?” Chedd raised the paddle to its resting position and then waded over to the table. He took a pastry, bit deeply and said, “Why?”

  “Because—” Effie followed him, abandoning her paddle midstroke and allowing water to flood back into the pump room. “Because there’s never been a curse laid that couldn’t be lifted.”

  Chedd stopped chewing. “Huh?” he mumbled through a mouthful of pastry.

  “Yes,” Effie said with growing conviction. She’d sort of made it up, but now that she was giving it some thought it sounded feasible. “Remember the tale of the chief’s wife, Maudelyn Dhoone?”

  “No.”

  “Maudelyn was married to Hoggie Dhoone, but she wasn’t Hoggie’s first choice. Hoggie was betrothed to the beauteous Beatrice, but Beatrice took a fall while out riding.” Effie ran a thumb across her throat. “Broke her neck. They carted her back to the roundhouse but it was too late. She was already on her deathbed. ‘Bring me Maudelyn,’ she commands. Maudelyn arrives and Beatrice beckons her real close. ‘I know you loosened the catch on my saddle strap so you could steal my husband from me. So in return I give you this curse. Though your womb will quicken as swift as any maid you will never give birth to a live bairn. I swear this on the names of eight gods and only the ninth can forsake it.’ ”

  Effie paused to appreciate the stricken expression on Chedd’s face. “Yes,” she confirmed. “A terrible curse. Beatrice dropped dead as the last word was spoken, binding the magic in place. Maudelyn wailed a ghastly cry and fell upon the corpse. ‘Which of the gods can forsake the curse?’ she screamed. ‘For I did not loose the strap, I swear it.’ ”

  Chedd whistled. “Mother-of-Bludd. What happened?”

  Effie picked a hazelnut off the top of the remaining pastry and popped it in her mouth. “Maudelyn married Hoggie within the month. She’d been giving him the eye all along—which explains why Beatrice got all cursey. So of course Maudelyn gets pregnant and her belly swells. And all the time she’s worried but still hopeful. Perhaps the curse won’t take. Perhaps by swearing on eight of the Stone Gods not nine, Beatrice made a crucial error. Anyway, nine months go by and Maudelyn gives birth and two dead babies are delivered. Twins.” Effie held out two fingers. “A girl and a boy, perfectly formed and perfectly dead. Poor Beatrice is beside herself with grief. She goes a bit loony and spends the next twenty years getting pregnant, giving birth to dead babies, and trying to lift the curse.”

  “She had to find which of the gods could lift it?”

  “Exactly. One in nine. She tried the women first—and that was a mistake.”

  Chedd was quick to nod. “Should have started with Behathmus and worked her way back.”

  Effie nodded right along with him. They were master strategists now, working out the rules of the game. “But Maudelyn didn’t think like that. Behathmus being the god of death and all, you can’t really blame her. He seemed most likely to seal the curse, not lift it.”

  “But he’s also the god of judgment. At Bannen we’ve a carving of him with a pair of scales. She should have asked him to judge her first.”

  Effie kicked water toward Chedd in her excitement. “Yes. But by the time Maudelyn gets around to pleading her case to Behathmus she’s getting on. She’d been slow on the uptake, and we all know Behathmus doesn’t suffer fools. And even if Maudelyn hadn’t loosened Beatrice’s strap she’d doubtless thought about it. So Behathmus passes judgment and decides to reverse the curse. He allows Maudelyn to give birth to a healthy baby boy but takes her life in the process.”

  “Damn,” Chedd said with satisfaction.

  “You two,” came a harsh voice from the stairs above the doorway. “Back to work.”

  Effie and Chedd scrambled to the pumps as Tull Buckler entered the room. Buckler had the pale-skinned clammy look of someone who had not spent enough time in the sun. He had changed out of his work clothes, and was now dressed in richly oiled beaverskins trimmed with teal feathers and the gray, tooth-shaped stones that were known as swamp pearls. Like all Graymen he wore knee-high leather boots proofed with tar.

  As Effie swung the paddle into motion, Buckler used a flint and striker to light one of the oil lamps chained to the wall. Shadows shivered into existence, making the pump room seem darker than before. Flames burned differently in Gray, Effie noticed. They flared unexpectedly, sheeting and hissing, powered by invisible bursts of fuel.

  “Is the funeral over?” she asked Buckler.

  Not wanting any part of this impertinence, Chedd ducked his head low and put extra effort into pumping. Effie thought he may have edged away from her, but as his feet were underwater it was difficult to tell.

  Buckler put a finger to his lips and exhaled. Knuckle rings glittered his reply.

  Effie resumed pumping. She knew the question showed disrespect, but surely being kidnapped and held against your will was disrespectful to her and Chedd? She considered speaking again, but Buckler’s gaze defeated her. It was as cold and murky as the swamp.

  “Go,” he said when the better part of an hour had passed. “Return to your cells. Do not tarry.”

  Chedd helped Effie rest her pump. Sweat sheened his face and neck. He’d lost some of his ruddy color in the past twenty days, she realized. Perhaps they both had.

  As they waded across the room, Chedd cleared his throat. Effie turned to look at him, but Chedd wasn’t looking at her. His gaze was on Buckler.

  The Grayman waited. A small movement of his hand brought his knuckle rings into the light.

  Chedd pulled off his gloves. Effie continued toward the doorway, expecting him to follow her. Chedd stood his ground. “You mean go back to our cells after we’ve had supper?” he said to Buckler.

  Buckler’s mouth twitched. It wasn’t a good twitch, like it might lead to a smile. It looked more closely related to a snarl. “Go,” he breathed.

  Chedd went, racing up the stairs after Effie. By the third step he was clear of the standing water. The switch from swamp to air made him stumble. Effie had felt it too—you had to put more effort into wading through water and when it suddenly disappeared you got unbalanced—but she managed to stay upright. Chedd toppled. His chin made contact with the stone step, driving his teeth together.

  “Come on,” Effie said, pulling him up and away. “Let’s go.”

  The Grayhouse stood on an island that had been sinking before there was such a thing as clan. The current roundhouse had been built atop the ruins of the previous roundhouse and that one built atop another one, a cycle that Effie had learned had been going on for nearly a thousand years. Gray periodically flattened the roundhouse and used the remnants to bui
ld up the remaining land. As far as Effie could tell Gray was due another rebuild. Even above water level, on the roundhouse’s first floor, the walls were deteriorating. Moss was breaking apart the stone. Expanding into crevices and forcing out the mortar, it channeled water through the roundhouse like a system of pipes. The smell was everywhere. Green. Dank. Decaying.

  Effie poked one of sandstone blocks as she hurried up the stairs. It gave like rotten wood.

  “Eff,” Chedd asked, brushing his chin, “am I bleeding?”

  “No,” she lied.

  Gray’s upper levels were quiet. Sworn clansmen had taken to the Salamander Hearth, and the Flood Door that spanned its entrance was closed. A handful of women were chewing mallow and weaving baskets by the foot of the second-story stair. Three goats blocked the way above them. Effie shooed them away.

  “They’re having supper,” Chedd said, kicking a mound of oats that had been spread across the stairs.

  “So can you.” Effie patted the neckline of her dress. “Always supposing you agree to my terms.”

  Chedd slowed. “You took the last pastry?”

  Reaching the top of the stairs, Effie did not look round. “Possibly.”

  “How?”

  “We are Blackhail and we are the first amongst clans,” she said breezily. “That’s makes us first among pastries as well.”

  Chedd hurried to catch up. “Don’t joke with me, Eff.”

  “Your cell or mine?” she asked.

  “Yours. It’s rained this morning. It’ll be drier.”

  Effie cut across the hallway, heading for the north ward. This section of the Grayhouse was part collapsed. Chunks of roof had caved in and makeshift repairs woven from bulrushes were jammed in place. Effie and Chedd moved easily across the buckled floors. Sometimes Effie skipped just for the fun of it.

  It was odd, really. Even though she was kidnapped and held prisoner in a foreign clan a thousand leagues from home, she didn’t mind very much. She didn’t feel in any danger. Mostly the clansmen and women ignored her, and apart from goat pat duty and pump duty she wasn’t obliged to do very much. And it was very interesting, being in a Bludd-sworn, water-logged, cursed and enemy clan.