by Anna Steffl
Sibelian finally rose.
“You know that she will die a fiery death,” the sovereign said. “Spare her from it. Use your sword.”
The plaza was so quiet that Nils swore he could hear the swoosh of the sword leaving the sheath and the crunch of it piecing into the bodice of the hay-stuff effigy. A wad of gagging phlegm rose in Nil’s throat. He’d seen many executions, but the first had been Breena’s—a mercy killing. As Alenius’s best friend, he stayed at his side when he stabbed Breena to put her out of suffering from the burns. To this day, the thought of it made his stomach sour. He coughed and spit.
“Ah, Nils. Bring us the torch,” said Alenius. “The woman must burn. It is her fate.”
In the thrill of hearing the sovereign acknowledge him, Nils forgot the twisted emotions of a moment ago. He drew himself up as tall as his bent back would allow. He was still above Rorke; the sovereign needed him. A Fortress Guard presented Nils with a long torch. Not trying to lean too heavily upon his cane, he shuffled to the effigy and was about to touch the torch to the hem of the woman’s dress when the sovereign said, “Give it to Rorke.”
As the fire spread from the dress to the stuffed sackcloth body, Alenius felt all the dread he feared. The burned wine and pissing had momentarily taken his mind from the memories he knew the burning of the effigy would ignite. As it burst into flame, making an orange glow against the sunset, he remembered Breena’s suffering. He had steeled himself somewhat against it. He knew Breena insisted on burning the effigy because she understood the pain the flames represented and wanted to see it visited upon their enemy. What he hadn’t been able to anticipate was her test of Sibelian’s loyalty, how it brought back the guilt he felt in killing her with his own knife. He had done it just as much to end his own suffering as hers.
My love, Breena said, I have always only thanked you for taking my life. It was hopeless. Perhaps it was wrong of me to remind you of that time, but I had to know Sibelian was with us. It was for his own good. With no heirs, the common people of Gheria will never begrudge him his position. We must do everything to ensure that he is respected as viceroy.
He will be respected when we show ourselves divine.
Still, many of the cabinetmen will plot against him. He’s not full-blood. There’s only one solution.
What is that? Alenius asked.
Kill the cabinetmen and their tradition of privilege. Poison their wine at our feast during the Winter Solemnity.
Only a few cabinetmen object to him. Why poison so many who support him?
What do you value more? The approval of seventy-five cabinet men or the love of a million commoners. They despise the cabinetmen.
Alenius hesitated. The cabinetmen contributed huge sums that supported the army and the Forbidden Fortress.
My love, with the world at your disposal, why do you need the gold of men who fancy themselves your advisors? You need neither their coin nor opinions. You will be benevolent to all.
Yes, Breena, I will be.
To all except your enemies.
MOON BLOOD
Two weeks later, near Verdea Crossing
“Ursatka mig.” Miss Nazar said excuse me in Gherian and gingerly dismounted for the third time that morning. Her accent was decent, and she had readily learned the words Degarius offered.
Heran Kieran halted to take her horse’s reins. “Some do omskart.”
Degarius cringed. The monk might be a man of peace, but he butchered the Gherian language by insisting on using the same cadences as Anglish. Degarius had tried to make him hear the differences dozens of times. It was useless. If they went into Gheria, Kieran was going to have to pretend to be mute.
It was Miss Nazar’s idea for them to learn Gherian. Until he was certain he could overpower Kieran, he had to pretend he was going along with the plan of them going into Gheria as a paltry threesome force. As taxing as it was to work with Kieran, an unexpected benefit was that it somehow made speaking with Miss Nazar easier. Not that she spoke to him often or unnecessarily. She was too proud. There’d be no pleasantries aimed at warming his affections; she was the kind of woman who wouldn’t bear being dismissed twice.
But now, she’d asked to be excused, again. Unattended illnesses, like diarrhea, could grow worse and stop their progress. So much for insisting that she was never too ill to ride. Well, she was still riding, but it was taking forever with these frequent stops. “Perhaps you should take something,” he called after her in Anglish so she would be certain to understand.
She stopped and turned. “Take something?”
“What did your apothecary send,” he asked Kieran. “Miss Nazar is ill.”
She lowered and shook her head. “It’s not illness. Because I wear breeches, perhaps you forget I’m not a man. How am I to say it?” She spiked the toe of her boot in the dirt, blurted, “It’s my time,” and darted into the woods.
Degarius pulled his hat to the top rim of his glasses. What kind of blockhead did she take him for? Breeches did nothing to disguise she was a woman; they made it more obvious, gave exact shape to what he’d only imagined. When she was out of sight, he groaned.
Kieran said, “It’s normal for a woman who’s not with child.”
Degarius groaned again. “I’m aware, Heran.” It was beyond imagining that a chaste brother ventured to teach him of women.
Upon returning and remounting, Miss Nazar asked, “What’s the Gherian term for a woman’s time?
“Dien efin. Moon blood.” Degarius’s face went hot.
“Your knowledge of Gherian is comprehensive,” Kieran said.
For once, Kieran said something Degarius was glad to hear—a change in subject. “I learned Gherian at the age where children are curious about life.”
“I’ve always thought it’s a pity that learning the meaning of words usually does little to give them value, or to guide one morally through life.”
Another barb at him? The brother was looking at Miss Nazar, not him. Funny, he’d assumed there would be sympathy between them because of their backgrounds. Was this about how easily she’d learned Gherian? Or because she’d spent her time in Solace learning Old Anglish—then resigned. Of course, Kieran didn’t approve. He probably blamed her for what happened at Solace, too.
“One uses words, Heran,” she said, “both internally and externally to frame moral questions. How can one do so without awareness of their meaning?”
“In the moment of truth, we find words teach one nothing,” Kieran said. “Who hasn’t acted solely on wordless, primal feelings and urges? In such cases, the state of one’s moral center determines if the resulting action is good.”
What in all hell was that about? Had the blasted superior inflicted this man on them as a punishment for that one moment Lerouge found them in? Had Miss Nazar told the superior about that, too? At least in his case, it had come from an honest feeling, even if it was only pity. Well, the monk and Miss Nazar could argue all they wanted about theology when he left them at Ferne Clyffe.
Verdea Crossing
Town—beds, baths, and a few hours break from the saddle. Even as a girl Arvana had never ridden so much.
Just ahead, Verdea Crossing lay like a patchwork blanket before the Black Top Mountains. They’d surely overnight in an inn. The superior had returned a portion of Arvana’s novitiate’s fee and added a fair sum for the others. Her purse held plenty of crowns to pay for beds and hot baths. What a treat it would be to peel off the road-weary tunic, soak off the week’s worth of dirt and moon blood, then slip into a bed. But as they neared the town gate, Degarius tucked all his hair under his hat and stashed his glasses in a pocket. Her small pleasure of anticipating a good night’s sleep dissipated. This was no treat for him. He worried he’d be recognized. They’d avoided any settlements so far, but they needed supplies and the tunnel at Verdea Cross was the fastest, easiest way into Cumberland.
He rubbed his bearded chin. The beard did go a long way as a disguise. The redcoats would be looking
for a blond man. The beard was reddish and made him look older, worn. Or perhaps the grimace from squinting was what aged him.
The people gathered at the gate, including three redcoats, looked at them as people always look at monks—wanting to stare but embarrassed to be noticed doing so.
Inside the gate, houses of rough-hewn timber lined the street. Keithan had been from Verdea Crossing. He might have grown up in one of these very homes. His parents could be living here still. What remembrance of him would console his parents? She couldn’t tell them how he’d rescued her from the stream at Summercrest and taken Chane away. Perhaps the best she might offer was that he was like a brother to her. The idea of finding his parents, however, had to remain only an idea.
A warm, yeasty smell interrupted the thought. Her mouth watered.
Degarius’s eyes squinted even harder. “Do you see a bakery?” he asked Kieran.
“Ahead, on the left.”
They tied the horses to a post. Degarius divvied the supplies each should procure. To her disappointment, except for the apples and bread she was to get, it was more of the dried foodstuff they’d already been eating.
With two long loaves in her backpack, she left the bakery and bit into a bun she’d bought for herself. Nothing tasted as good as plain bread with a hard crust and airy center. As she let a bit of crust soften in the roof of her mouth, she looked into the next-door shop’s window. A delicate blue caught her eye. Among the fancy chemises and pelisses hanging on display was a robin-egg-blue nightgown. After wearing for three weeks men’s leather-seated riding breeches that were now terribly stained, the gown would be something clean and fresh, even if just for one night. Though it didn’t make sense to buy it, it seemed somehow essential. But a monk couldn’t buy a nightgown. Ah, but she was a monk on a hant-marking mission. If asked, she’d say the nightgown was a gift for the wife of the Cumberlandian headman who allowed their mission in his lands. She tucked the rest of the bun in a pocket and resolved to enter, but she stayed where she was, looking at her face’s reflection in the window. Had Nan once loved this person, but didn’t anymore. The thought made her stomach, though filled with bread, feel empty. She took the bun from her pocket and bit into it as she resolved to go inside.
Funny, it took courage to enter. She was going to fight The Scyon, but hesitated at entering a shop? No, only this kind of shop. She never had occasion to pick a pretty chemise or nightgown for herself. In Sylvania, by the time she’d grown old enough to have such clothing, she simply began to use those left behind by her mother from the drawer her father never opened. At Solace, one was given a plain, coarse undershirt, then tasked with making one to replace it for the storeroom. She wasn’t in Sylvania or Solace.
Inside, surrounded by beautiful women’s intimate clothes, she felt as out of place as if she were a man, or a child peeking at her mother’s things. The shopkeeper, a girl only a few years beyond Jesquin’s age, thankfully was tatting lace and seemed determined to keep at it rather than decide what to say to a monk, giving Arvana the leisure to inspect the gown without interrogation. As she touched the finely woven soft cotton of the blue nightgown, she remembered secretly opening the drawer and trying on her mother’s lace-trimmed chemises and nightgowns when her father and Allasan were in the barn. Though the sleeves hung far down past her hands and her tiny body was lost in the draping fabric, she envisioned herself as a grown woman, the mysteries of her body tantalizingly only half-hidden by the thin layer of fabric. The blue nightgown wasn’t as transparent as her mother’s or as frilly with ruffled lace about the sleeves, but it was pretty in its own way. No one would see her in it. She had the coin for her own room. She pointed to the gown and in her deepest voice asked, “How much?”
The shop girl looked up from her tatting. “A quarter crown.”
It was a dear price. Perhaps she was meant to haggle the price down, but the less she spoke, the better. So, she nodded and the girl came, took the gown from the window, folded it, wrapped it in a sheet of flower-printed paper.
As she came from the shop, Degarius met her. Through a mouthful of bread, he mumbled something in Gherian. He must have been in the bakery just after her.
“I don’t understand.”
He swallowed. “I asked why you were in there.” Clear disapproval was in his voice.
She peeled back the paper wrapping on the nightgown. A hint of blue showed. “I wanted something clean.”
“You’ll never use it, unless you want to freeze. It was foolish—”
“It was my coin. I don’t need your approval,” she said and shoved the package into her coat. “Have you found an inn?”
“We’re leaving now.” Then quietly, he said, “There are reward fliers plastering the wall by the fruit seller.”
The wrapping paper crushed against her chest as she turned and headed to her horse. She was disappointed they had to go, but if staying was imprudent, it was imprudent. Couldn’t he have been just a hair kinder, though? That he despised her was clear. But her bucket was already overflowing with his derision. Why must he ladle on more?
When Kieran returned, they rode nonstop through town to the watch house before the tunnel the ancients had cut through the mountain. In the bright afternoon, Verdea Crossing was a hole in the rock-faced mountainside that looked like a gaping, toothless mouth.
“I bought spiritbanes. They’re in my pack,” Kieran said with a warier eye to the tunnel than the watch house. “The ancients made it, and I’ve heard Cumberland is full of unmarked hants. Hold up. Let me get them.”
Spiritbanes were useless, Arvana wanted to say, a superstition. The dead couldn’t hurt you. But it seemed wrong to speak about the things man shouldn’t know. She took the spiritbane Kieran offered, a large one on a leather string. She lifted it to put around her neck, but the pungent smell gagged her and her horse curled its lip in disgust, so she tucked the string into the back of her belt.
At the watch house, the two guards patrolling the tunnel were playing cards. The tunnel shortened the treacherous trip over the mountains from days to a short level ride, though few chose to venture in judging by the guards’ boredom. One of the redcoats shook his finger at the other guard then laid down his cards. “Don’t look at my cards.” To them, he said, “Ah, monks. Stop and get a torch. You’ll need it in the tunnel. It’s a long, dark ride.”
Arvana glanced to the guardhouse. A posting giving the price on Degarius’s head was tacked to the door. She had better get the torch.
As she dismounted, a guard asked Kieran, “Why are you going into Cumberland?”
“To mark hants along the road.”
“I thought the hant monks wore a full covering.”
“Those are in our packs. They are impractical for riding.”
The guard nodded. “High time someone marked the hants. I stumbled into a bronze statue there and had bad luck for two years. Good luck with the Cumberlandians, though. They’ll commit you to the Maker’s peace more likely than thank you. If you can stand the cold, don’t light a fire at night. You’ll have better luck keeping the robbers off, though you don’t look as if you have much to steal.”
“Just the hant markers.” Kieran reached behind and patted one of his packs, which did contain a bag of the blue glass eyes.
Arvana took a torch from the pile. The second guard, who had a long, dull face and lumpy nose that looked as if it had been broken several times, fanned his cards into a pile. “We won’t charge you for it, seeing as how you’re going to mark the hants.” As she passed him to light the torch, he got up. “You look familiar.”
She didn’t want to speak and give herself away as a woman, so she merely shrugged as if to say she had no idea why he might think that, and went to remount. He followed her.
Her foot in the stirrup, he said, “I know what it is. Have you been to Shacra Paulus?”
Her pulse raced as she tried to shake her head nonchalantly in the negative. How could he know her?
“I was stationed
there on quay duty when they brought Governor Keithan’s body from Orlandia. A Maker’s woman played the kithara during the rite. I took note because I play a little myself. Say,” he narrowed his eyes at Degarius, “who are you?”
Instinctively, she squeezed her calves to the horse’s sides and clucked to the packhorse to go fast. Kieran and Degarius, tight on her tail, galloped after her into the tunnel.
The torchlight grew brighter as they went deeper into the long, dark, tall shaft. The dank smell seemed like the smell of the cold darkness itself, as if it were the thick thing choking out the light instead of a mountain of rock. The hoofbeats echoed eerily until they dashed through a shallow puddle. Then, it sounded as if a whole herd of horses was careening though. Arvana glanced back. A spot of light, like a single star in a vast black night, bobbed up and down. The redcoats were following.
On and on the tunnel went. It seemed like they’d been riding for a dozen minutes. Would the torch last?
Degarius rode up beside her. “Don’t look back. It slows you down.”
She took a deep breath of stale tasting air through her mouth. Even the bitter scent of the spiritbane would have been more welcome.
The tunnel made a wide turn and grayish daylight lit the rough-hewn walls and then finally eclipsed their torch’s golden glow. They rode into the fresh air and blinding daylight. She flung her torch into a rocky ditch and minding Degarius’s admonition, crouched well forward on her mount’s neck and rode without looking back. The flapping spiritbane tugged at her belt.
Degarius looked back. Kieran was right behind him. The Gherians had come out of the tunnel. Miss Nazar and the packhorse were ahead, racing toward a rickety plank that crossed an eroded streambed. For all love, didn’t she see it?
As her horse began the leap, an unbidden image filled the space behind Degarius eyes.
His little group of Frontiersmen were racing from the Gherians who had discovered their confrontation with the creature in Lake Sandela. They were trapped between two pursuing groups and a gully. He shouted for them to cross. Nat, being sentimental, had brought along Micah’s horse. “Leave her!” Degarius yelled, but it was too late. They started the jump. They went up, over. They’d cleared the gully. Nat’s horse hit hard, throwing him forward. Micah’s horse pulled, rolling Nat to the side of his mount. He clung to his horse’s neck. But then the horse and rider became one dark tumbling shadow that haunted the air with the eerie joined cries of boy and beast. Ginger, Micah’s horse, veered off from them and disappeared into the close horizon of night.
