The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  As he walked to Sunell, he could feel everyone’s smirks and snide grins as they pretended not to hear what was going on.

  “Sunell,” he said, “I like it that you’ve always been a bowl full of spark knots, but next time let me take care of myself.”

  “He’s a jerk. How long you still have to work here, anyway?”

  “Couple weeks. Whenever King Felnis’s stablemaster collects his horses and I can pay back Malic.” As long as I still have enough horses to meet the contract. Eight months of this, working the Stop all night, his fields and horses all day. Although, lately, the only work he did with his horses was to burn their bodies. Pile on two kids and a wife and Daveon was tired.

  “Why does he make you? Nobody else who owes him does.” She might only be twelve-summers, but she had a nose for the village. Lady Isabell had chosen her page well.

  “I think because he can,” Daveon said.

  He poured the last of his pitcher’s ale into Sunell’s cup, then went to the cask to refill it. Empty. He glanced out the window, at the rain rattling against the glass and heaved a deep sigh. Of course.

  “Two Fingers,” he called across the hall. The half-orc rested near the door, his feet pitched up on a stool, his eyes closed, though Daveon knew that was more ruse than anything. Little snuck past the bastard.

  The half-orc cracked an eye.

  “I need a barrel,” Daveon said.

  “Congratulations.” Two Fingers closed his eye again.

  “C’mon, man. I can’t carry one up myself.”

  Two Fingers grabbed his crotch and squeezed then weaved his fingers behind his head and sunk deeper into his slouch.

  Daveon glanced at the men at the bar. First Zander, then Aaron, then Ventin Lairs. Each avoided his look, taking sudden interests in the dirt beneath their fingernails and the gouges in the bar’s surface.

  “I’ll help,” Sunell said, slipping off her stool.

  Daveon scoffed, then shrugged. “Sure.”

  They dragged the empty cask through the kitchen and out the back door, stopping under the awning. Outside, the rain fell in a solid sheet. Daveon could smell the soaked earth, the worms crawling over the stones. The ale cellar was across the yard, under the buttery near the stables.

  “Rain decided to take itself seriously,” Daveon said.

  “Look,” Sunell whispered.

  A young man, maybe a head shorter than Daveon, stood in the rain watching them. He was bald with a shaved chin and his clothes had the look of sleeping in the dirt. Slung across his back was a pack piled with animal hides.

  “Good evening,” Daveon called.

  “It usually is,” the man said.

  “For the lucky, I guess,” Daveon said.

  The man watched as they dragged the empty cask to the ale cellar, then stood it next to the wall outside.

  “If you’re looking for the entrance, it’s over on the front.” Daveon threw open the door and dropped down the four steps into the cellar. He was already soaked through.

  “I saw it, but it looked…crowded,” the man called down to him.

  “You got that right,” Daveon called back. The man had an odd accent, one Daveon had never heard before.

  He glanced at Sunell standing at the top of the stairs, then at the barrel. This thing had to weigh thirty stones at least. Probably six times the girl, even soaking wet as she was.

  The rain already coursed down the steps in small waterfalls, slicking the stones.

  This’ll never work. Fuck you, Two Fingers.

  “You just try and balance the top,” he said to her.

  He lunged against the barrel with his shoulder and tipped it enough to get his grip under the lip, then squatted and grunted and strained with everything he had. The barrel scraped up and over the first step.

  He stopped and panted.

  The bald man stepped down next to Sunell. He was barely taller than the girl. He gripped the top lip of the barrel. “May I help?” he asked.

  Great. Two six-stone kids trying to do what a fifteen-stone man couldn’t do. Might as well ask them to lift the entire Sunflower Stop.

  “Why not,” muttered Daveon. “Ready? Heave!”

  The barrel plopped up the next step so fast that he had to let go of it and catch himself from falling.

  “Holy Airim,” Sunell gasped.

  Daveon looked again at the stranger. He wasn’t as young as he’d thought. He was short, with a quiet smile about his lips, but with hollowed out eyes. Dark. They were slanted and his ears were almost as pointed as an elf’s but not quite. And far stronger than he looks.

  “Okay,” Daveon said. “Okay.”

  The man damn near lifted the cask to the top of the steps single handedly, with Daveon feeling he was there more for moral support than anything. Standing at the top of the cellar, Daveon clapped mud and damp cobwebs from his hands then held one out to the stranger.

  “Appreciate the help, mister,” he said.

  “You are welcome,” the man said. “And I would appreciate a room, if possible. I have coin.”

  Now, with the inn’s torchlight reaching them, Daveon could see scars ringing the man’s neck and up his wrist as they shook hands.

  “Pretty full tonight, but help me get this inside and I’ll see what I can finagle for you,” he said. “Daveon Therentell.”

  “Anaz,” the man said. “Just Anaz.”

  Inside, Anaz refused a cup of ale, asking instead for water. Daveon wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Sure, Malic’s chicken-shit-aged ale tasted terrible, but nobody ever asked for a cup of water. “Like, from the cistern?”

  Sunell did what she did best, dove into the man with both hands, prying from between every word any hints of history, spilling up all of hers, but especially of Fisher Pass. He wasn’t exactly secretive, but Daveon couldn’t help but notice the way he deflected her questions with his own, or offered only oblique answers. Had anyone else acted that way, Daveon would have thought they were being a little rude, but the way he held that friendly smile, listened with genuine interest, laughed easily, he couldn’t help but like the odd fellow.

  The way he lifted his cup, smooth, the surface of the water not rippling. The way he sat in the chair, straight, not slouched, but seemingly comfortable, his body betraying nothing of his travels or tiredness. The skin around his neck, puckered and worn. Pale streaks peeked above his cloak’s collar, snuck out the cuff of his sleeve. Scars. The body’s ink of stories written in blood.

  Something happened as he listened to this strange man with his strange accent and his strange scars. A pressure against his heart. An abscess of his soul. The ugly roil of jealousy bubbled up. Here was someone ten summers younger than him, by the looks of it, who had true stories clawed into his skin. Not the bullshit tales Daveon spun, but honest-to-Airim battles won or at least survived.

  “But you didn’t say where you’re from,” Sunell said.

  “My home is many, many leagues away,” Anaz said, “but for three years I have lived closer. Two days south of here.”

  “South?” Daveon said. “Towards the bone wall?”

  “Bone wall?” The stranger looked genuinely confused.

  He didn’t seem like he was lying, but who wouldn’t have heard of or known of the bone wall? Generations had literally come and gone in the fight against it.

  “Do you have any family?” Sunell asked.

  “Sunell,” Daveon said.

  “Any kids?”

  “Sunell!”

  Anaz smiled at her and bowed his head. “I travel alone.” Daveon felt a weight behind the word alone.

  “There is a trading market tomorrow, yes?” Anaz asked. “I would trade for winter supplies, if my skins would be had.” A dozen or more rolled hides had been tied to Anaz’s pack.

  “I don’t pay you to tell stories, Therentell.” Malic leaned between Anaz and Sunell, set a stack of dirty platters on the bar, then stayed there looking Anaz up and down. “Don’t believe we’ve met
.”

  “Anaz, this is Evan Malic. Proprietor,” Daveon said. “Evan, this is Anaz. He was just saying he was hoping his hides would be had at market tomorrow and I was saying I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be.”

  “I can think of a reason or two,” Malic said. “Starting with you haven’t paid.”

  “For a room?” Anaz asked.

  “A room? Oh no, we don’t have any rooms. You haven’t paid for your spot at market tomorrow.”

  “He doesn’t—” Daveon started to say, but Malic shot him a look that shut him up on the spot.

  “I didn’t know one must pay for their spot at market. I have coin, but hoped to spend it on a room.” Anaz set four coins on the bar, two senits and two wooden coins Daveon had never seen before. They had a water droplet burned into the surface.

  “I didn’t either,” Sunell said, an edge to her voice.

  “Girl, I suspect there’s a lot you don’t know,” Malic said. “Like I said, fellow, no chambers left. Full up tonight, but these’ll cover your market fee.” Malic palmed the senits.

  “Two full senits?” Sunell practically screeched.

  “For the market and a room?” Anaz said. Even now, he held that smile, as if he couldn’t be more pleased with how the evening was going. Daveon didn’t know what irritated Malic more, that the man seemed happy with being robbed or that he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “It is raining,” Daveon said.

  “Thanks, Therentell. I hadn’t noticed,” Malic said.

  “A roof would be welcome. To keep the mud from my wares.”

  “I don’t know where you’re from, mister,” Malic said, “but ‘round here, I’m known for not repeating myself. Full up on rooms. Two senits to sell. Simple.”

  “I thought maybe, since you let Olen and Sven use the livery stall tonight, maybe he could…” Daveon trailed off under Malic’s glare and he clenched his jaw until his teeth squeaked. What he wouldn’t give to sock Malic in the face at that moment. It wasn’t right, the way he ran this town. The way he and his half-orc had come into Fisher Pass eight years ago, pushed the Connors out of the Sunflower Stop and started running things anytime the baron weren’t around which was more often than not. It stuck in Daveon’s craw something fierce.

  “A night like this, I will be happy to listen to rain on the leaves,” Anaz said.

  “And by the look of things, your clothes’ll be glad for the wash,” Malic said. He straightened and flipped the coins, then caught them. He looked at the platters still on the bar, then at Daveon. Daveon picked them up and turned to take them into the kitchen.

  Just one more shitty thing from a shitty man. But did everyone have to just let him get away with it all the time?

  He stopped and turned back. He set the platters on the bar, avoiding Malic’s eyes.

  “You know what, Anaz?” Daveon said, “I have a damn fine stable that’ll keep the rain off you tonight. Brand new. I can’t stand the idea of abandoning you to the elements. It’s not the Fisher Pass way.”

  Across the hall, Two Fingers stood, looped his greatsword’s belt over his shoulder and walked towards them.

  Malic looked like he was about to say something, then stopped, thought about it. The scowl slipped away and he forced a smile as he said, “There’s an idea. Then he can bore you to sleep with his war stories.”

  “Boring?” Sunell said. “Daveon and his brother are heroes! Rayen even has a national holiday named after him. I never grow tired of hearing that story. Anaz, have you heard of the Battle at Lindisfarne?”

  Anaz shook his head, looking from Sunell to Daveon.

  “Sunell,” Daveon said, “Not tonight.” His stomach clenched at the idea of telling that lie again.

  “What? Why not? It’s wonderful!” Her eyes glistened and she pushed her mug across the bar.

  “Yeah, Therentell,” Two Fingers rumbled. “Why not?”

  Daveon picked up the platters again and walked towards the kitchen.

  “Running away?” Malic called after him. “That’s not part of the story that I remember.”

  Daveon stopped at the door, a dry rot in his mouth. Could Malic know?

  “I wouldn’t mind hearing it again,” Aaron Merthis said from next to Sunell.

  Daveon turned back, set the platters on the bar. Maybe he could abbreviate it. Focus only on the real hero, his brother. “I just…” Anaz watched him, that constant smile, and Daveon found he couldn’t get the words out, as if the lie had lodged itself in his throat.

  “Daveon here is a real killer,” Sunell said. “How many Wretched did you take that day, again?”

  “No, not a real killer,” Malic said. “Only of Wretched. It’s one thing to kill something that is already dead outside of a bone wall. It takes a real man, though, to kill another man.”

  “I’ve found,” Anaz said quietly, pausing to take a drink, that odd ring of scar tissue around his neck rising and falling as he swallowed, “that often, when you kill another man, the one who dies is yourself.”

  Everyone stared at the stranger. He didn’t meet anyone’s look, instead swirling his mug, watching the water ripple off the edges.

  “Really?” Malic finally said. “I’ve found it rather invigorating.”

  Daveon looked from Malic to Two Fingers to Sunell. Aaron paused, a forkful of potatoes stuck halfway between his plate and mouth.

  “If Therentell isn’t going to tell his story, I have one for you all. I killed a man once—”

  Two Fingers looked up and down the bar from behind Malic and flashed his fingers several times, the two severed nubs wobbling on the end of his right hand. He mouthed the word “fifty.”

  “—more a boy really. Pimples so bad he looked like he’d bobbed for apples in a bee hive. Anyway, Two Fingers and I were with a group of guys over the Salt Boil Sea in Lallabanadra doing…well…what were we doing there again?”

  “Shopping,” Two Fingers said.

  “Shopping.” Malic stared at Daveon as he spoke. Never blinking. “This kid didn’t like what I was getting and he and a bunch of pals tried killing us. So we killed them back. I got to this kid and I’d dropped my blade along the way, so I ripped his sword from him, tackled him and pulled my knife. He grabbed my hand with both of his. A boy like that, knows he’s gonna’ die, you’d be surprised how strong he gets. Ever feel something like that, Therentell, when you fought the Wretched at Lindisfarne? Ever feel how a man can find muscles he never knew existed? There I am with one good hand pushing down the knife to his throat. Inch by inch. And us, just looking at each other. Time so slow an entire summer passes in a heartbeat. Oh Daveon, you’re a war hero. You know what it’s like. The juice that rides when you’re killing a man. When that knife finally reached him and the skin puckered under the tip and his eyes said he knew he was dying and the blood slipped up and around his neck all gentle like—well, that’s real power.”

  Without looking away from Daveon, Malic took Sunell’s mug and downed a swig of ale. Wiped a hand across his mouth.

  “You know, I don’t blame you Therentell. It makes sense why someone like you—the way your whole hero-life has gone to shit, horses dying, barn burning down, eating food out of the mud—why someone who seems to have no power over anything, would cling to his war stories the way you do. So you just go ahead and keep on telling those. We understand.”

  Daveon didn’t know what to do. A white roar of humiliation hummed in his ears. Aaron looked down at his fork of potatoes, set it back on the plate. Sunell stared at her hands in her lap. Only Anaz would look at Daveon. His smile was gone.

  The Sunflower Stop’s door slammed open, the sudden swell of rain sounds over the crowd’s chatter. A man in a purple cloak with an eagle emblem across his tunic charged into the inn.

  They turned at the noise.

  “A king’s messenger,” Sunell gasped.

  “The fuck,” Malic said.

  Daveon felt his pulse quicken.

  A king’s messenger.

/>   Here.

  Water poured from the traveler as he threw back his hood. He was elven, his strawberry hair braided into four tassels. A wake of silence followed him as he walked to the hearth and pounded his staff into the wooden floor.

  “Raise the hue and cry,” he called. “The wall moves!”

  7

  Isabell dug her thumb into the meat of her palm, desperate to drive the shake from her hands. Adon burned in her vision, his face a ravaged mess of her father’s violence. Her father. His blood running through her veins. Her shortsword hung from her bedpost. How easy would it be to open those veins? Purge everything he’d given her onto the stone floor? Or, better yet, to use the Mistress Syrup that her master at arms had taught her to mix. Painless. Slow. Complete.

  To think, when I am so close, that it could be so nearly undone…

  Let him weep over a putrid puddle of his undoing. Her dead face laughing at him.

  Was that all he left her? To breathe or not to breathe. Was that the only choice he’d left her over her own future? In one dinner he had stolen her dreams of being an Airim’s Lance and replaced them with nightmares of marriage to an old man known for his violence and conniving.

  She sat at her looking glass and in it saw scarlet splatters on her cheek and chin. Blood. Not hers, but spilled for her. Still shaking, she tried to wipe it away. She rubbed it and rubbed it, scrubbing until her jaw burned, then faster, harder, the skin buckling under her fingernails, Adon’s blood replaced by her own.

  She wrapped the cloth around her fist and punched the looking glass. Shards scattered across the table top. She stood and kicked her stool, sent it arcing into the wall. Red pain stormed through her big toe and she snarled like an animal, like the beast he had bred her to be and she snatched her sword from the bedpost, flung the jeweled scabbard at the broken mirror and hacked at her bed. Every thunk thrilled up her arm, flinging slivers skipping off the stone walls, the stone floor. Her stone fury. She didn’t scream. No. An icy rage, like a winter’s murder, made rigid her grip, unyielding and unforgiving.

  When three of her four bedposts had been felled, the toppled canopy draped across her bed like a funeral cowl, her lungs heaving, only then did she stop.