by Kaleb Schad
“No, not just anyone.”
Isabell felt herself blushing. Gods, she hated everything about this man at that moment. The thought filled her with sadness. She was losing her family, her life. With this deal, she would be a dead woman walking from now until the day her body died. A step away from being a Wretched.
“You’ll have nothing to fear,” she said. She tried to find some life to put into her voice, but knew she failed. “I swear.”
“You drive a hard bargain, daughter.”
He smiled at her. Actually smiled at her.
Isabell forced down bile.
What had she done?
“Let it be known that I can be merciful as well as just,” the baron called as two of his new militia men finished dragging Anaz up out of the cell. Isabell used all of her ladyship training to keep from gasping at the sight of him. His left eye was crusted yellow and black snot had dried under his nose. She prayed it wasn’t true. Please don’t let it be true. It left us. It had been a year, maybe more, since the last case of the Rot.
“My daughter has convinced me that you saved her life, even while putting it in danger,” the baron said.
Anaz slowly stood and blinked against the grey sunlight and he pressed the heel of his hand into his left temple. She had to remind herself not to stare. It’s just that the shaved head and the angled eyes and the memory of him moving like a specter between the undead, as if he’d been born to killing Wretched, the memory of him sleeping next to her—there were so many reasons to stare and not enough to look away.
Her father turned to the handful of people who’d stopped to see what the baron was doing. The butcher Henley had come out of his store, his apron pink and smeared, a cleaver still in his hand. He looked as if he’d been crying all morning, his eyes shot through with blood and swollen.
“Of course,” the baron said, loud enough to be heard across the square, glancing at the three swollen forms swinging from the gallows, “you’ll needs stay in Fisher Pass. Every man must do his part.”
Anaz took a stumbling step forward and he stared deep into the baron’s eyes. Isabell felt dread tickling her guts. Don’t say something foolish, she begged, don’t do something I cannot undo.
“My lord,” Anaz said and the words were more like sliding blades than promises of fealty, “your pale god of death himself couldn’t drag me from this village.”
Daveon could feel the wrongness before he’d even reached the stable. Crying, quiet and secretive.
Nikolai sat on a stool outside of Fennel’s stall. He leaned on his knees and held his head and snot and tears dripped unheeded between his legs.
“Nikolai?” Daveon rushed to him and knelt and pulled his son to him. He looked at Fennel. She was standing odd, her weight over her hind quarters as if she were scared to stand on her front legs. Black ooze burbled from a nostril. She coughed and swished her tail half heartedly.
“She’s going to die,” Nikolai sobbed. “She’s going to die.”
“No, son,” Daveon whispered. He lifted Nikolai’s face to him. “She’ll be okay. She’s going to be okay.” These were the lies a father should tell his son. These were the good lies.
“She isn’t.” Nikolai shook his head, his face scrunching up, and his eyes darted back and forth between Daveon’s. “She’s sick and she’s going to die and that means we’ll have to sell Syla and if we sell Syla then we won’t have any horses and we’ll have to run away from the monsters on our feets and Elnis can’t run very fast, but the monsters can, the monsters can run really fast, but Elnis can’t and Miria isn’t very fast either and I don’t think I can fight very goodly, not like you, I’ve been trying, but not like you, Pa, and the monsters will catch us and—”
Daveon seized his son into him as hard as he could and held him until the words fell into gurgles and sobs. They stayed there rocking like that for a long time.
Alysha took the long way around Fisher Pass, Miria in tow, walking all the way north, then east around the baron’s keep and came into town from the eastern bridge instead of the west. It took an extra hour, but it was the only way she could get to Evie’s seamstress shop without going through the town square and seeing the Sunflower Stop. If she had her way, she’d never lay eyes on that place again until the day she and her family left. Airim willing, that day would be today.
Evie gave a small start when Alysha came in through the back door. She sat on a short wooden stool, a long emerald cloak draped across her lap, purple splotched hands working at the hem. Evie Summers had been a good friend of Alysha’s mother and, to this day, Alysha still thought of her more as an aunt than a family friend. Alysha wasn’t certain, but she thought Evie might be the oldest resident of Fisher Pass.
“Lord, girl,” Evie said, “what’s the meaning of sneaking up on an old lady like that?”
“Miria,” Alysha said, “this is Mrs. Evie Summers. Had you ever met her before?”
Miria wouldn’t release Alysha’s hand, only shaking her head then stepping behind Alysha’s skirt so Evie couldn’t see her.
“Oh, Airim’s love, is that…” Evie trailed off.
It had taken all of the first day to get Miria to let Alysha bathe her and by the time they’d washed the dress she’d been wearing, the blood stains from her family wouldn’t come out. Alysha had dressed her in the only extra pair of pants Nikolai had and a shirt, but that wouldn’t do. Alysha wasn’t going to force the girl to wear boys’ clothes on top of everything else that had happened to her. Plus, she’d need traveling garb if they were leaving today. The mountain passes would be cold.
“I saw your husband when he came back that night,” Evie said. “But I couldn’t see who it was he’d brought with him. Heard about…well…I heard it all the next morning.”
“Mrs. Summers, Miria Sket, here, needs some traveling clothes. I told her I knew just the person who could help us.”
“I’m sure I have something.” Evie rocked back and forth, then reached for the table and pulled herself to her feet. She stood for a second holding the table. “Traveling?”
“Something for the cold mountains.”
“Aly,” Evie said, her brow pinched. It had driven Alysha’s mother crazy, that nickname, but Alysha had always liked it. Only Mrs. Summers ever called her that. “You’re not thinking of running?”
Alysha covered Miria’s ears with her hands. “Did you see that thing Daveon brought back?” she whispered. “You’re not thinking of actually staying are you?”
Evie shook her head and looked at Miria. “I don’t know, Aly. After what he did to the Fentins…”
“What who did?” Alysha asked.
Evie looked to the front of her store, out the window. Alysha could see the square through the fogged glass. There was the cage in the ground that the baron was holding the strange man who’d stayed at their house last week and next to it was the gallows, but she couldn’t see much of that, just the steps leading up to the platform. She eased past Evie, into the front of the store. She looked out the window.
Three bodies hung from the gallows, a man, woman and a young boy. She recognized Mary Fentin immediately. They’d been close once, when they were young and even to this day had made sure to get together at least once a year.
Alysha slapped her hand across her mouth, caught herself from screaming.
“They’d tried running,” Evie whispered behind her.
Alysha blinked and looked through her tears at her hung friend and she felt like something was ripping inside of her, jagged and hot. She wanted to wail, but held herself back. Miria was watching.
“He won’t care that you’re Therentells,” Evie said. “If you try to run…”
Not her family. Alysha would never let this happen to her family. They were getting out of here and they would never look back. She would get her sons and Miria and, yes, even her maddening husband the hell away from this baron and the Wretched.
And Airim save the soul that stood in her way.
Anaz di
dn’t know what to do. And damn if his head wouldn’t stop pounding long enough for a thought to squeeze through.
He sat in the shade of the lady potter’s store, the alley between it and the Sunflower Stop narrow, the Stop’s walls looming half-again Anaz’s height over him. He pulled down his britches and examined his thigh. It was the color of spoiled vegetables from groin to knee and swollen to near twice its size. The claw marks had ugly red rings around them and when he touched them, lightly, lightly, the flesh was hot and Anaz worried it might burst. He pulled his pants back up and tied them.
Across the square, a crow had landed on Edgar Fentin’s head and was bobbing over its face, plucking wet strands of eyeball out of its socket. Anaz couldn’t look away. He’d learned their names since being released. It was the first thing he’d done. Edgar and Mary Fentin and their son William.
He didn’t think about anything, sitting there, watching that clear optic liquid dribbling down the dead father’s chalky face except maybe that the father had tried and look what it had gotten him. That’s maybe what he was thinking about when Sunell found him in that alley and whispered in his ear.
Sunell opened a hatch behind Aaron Henley’s butcher’s shop and they descended a steep set of wooden stairs. From one set of hanging bodies to another. These fresher, skinned and cold, hanging in the meat cellar under the butcher shop. Anaz had to swing his injured leg like a log in a wide arc from one step to the next to get down the stairs and each one sent pain jolting up the base of his skull.
Isabell and another woman stood between the skinned pigs, their necks ending suddenly, pointed at the dirt floor. The second woman was about the same age as Isabell, with long blond hair and green eyes that tracked Anaz’s every movement. She stood a half step behind Isabell and her clothes were more plain than the Lady Blackhand’s.
Isabell watched him. Her black eye had healed over the days, but new cuts from her fighting lined her cheeks and throat. Insults to that pale, perfect skin.
He found himself standing wanting to say something, anything, and being able only to stare. Perhaps for her that was enough, though.
“Anaz,” Isabell said.
“He was hiding outside of the Sunflower Stop,” Sunell said.
She frowned and sniffed while she looked at him. He knew he mustn’t look nor smell too good, even with the dead animals around them. Whatever this disease was that attacked him, it wasn’t letting up. He spent every moment he could inside the hsing-li trying to chase it off.
“Are you feeling well?” Isabell asked.
“I wasn’t,” Anaz said.
“But you are now?”
“I wasn’t hiding.”
“Oh.” Isabell let Anaz’s hands go. “I don’t have the right to ask, Anaz, but I need your help.”
“You freed me.”
“I couldn’t let my father take another innocent life,” Isabell said.
“Thank you.”
“You saw what happened to the Fentins?”
Anaz didn’t say anything.
“My father has installed a new militia. Dozens of young men who’ve grown up on war stories and never swung a sword.”
“I saw them.”
“They’re guarding the city. Watching for the Wretched, they say, but mostly watching for runaways like the Fentins. My father is trapping everyone in the city.”
“As you said he would.”
“And yet there are families who want to leave, who are going to leave. I need you to help them get past the militia safely.”
Anaz closed his eyes and breathed in and he could smell the copper of pig blood and the damp dirt walls and maybe even a little of Isabell. Helping people escape. Get past safely. Safe. Their lives in his hands. Like the Fentins.
Like Reyn’s had been.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t.”
“My wounds. I can barely stand.”
“Those scars on your body tell me you’ve suffered worse.”
He shook his head and looked at Isabell’s feet. Her boots were caked with mud, gold colored buckles set into the leather.
“Please, Mr. Anaz,” the woman behind Isabell said. “Lady Isabell said you have magic, that you used that magic to kill four Fletchers. Anyone who can do that can save my parents.”
Anaz looked up at the woman. The corners of her mouth twitched and she looked like she was struggling not to say more.
“This is my handmaiden, Lelana,” Isabell said. “It’s her parents and another woman with her children who are leaving tonight. With or without your help if they must. I dread what will happen if it’s without.”
Her parents.
Everyone is someone’s child. They’re all important. The Fentins were important and look what you did to them.
“My lady,” he said. He tried to keep his voice from shaking. “You don’t understand what you ask. What I’ve had to do not to get involved. Everyone I’ve ever tried to help or who has ever tried to help me has died. Everyone.”
Isabell pursed her lips as she listened. She seemed to be getting angry.
“If I say yes to this, I will only bring you misery and violence. I have sworn an oath to never kill another mortal again.”
“I don’t want you to kill anyone.”
“And what if a guard sees us? Chases us? Threatens one of my charges? What would you expect of me then?”
“Do what you can. There is risk, yes, but I won’t ask you to break your oath.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I’ve seen what you can do, Anaz. There must be ways for you to get people through those walls and away from here without being seen.”
She was right about that. He could do it, he knew. It would be hard, with these injuries and this sickness, but he could still do it…probably.
“They’ll be better off without me.”
“They’ll be exactly like the Fentins are. Dead. These are simple people, Anaz. The only time they travel at night is when there’s a lantern festival or to watch the Winter Whisp migrations. They don’t know anything about this kind of stuff. Not like you do. Please,” Isabell whispered.
She was right about that, too. There would be more. They’d try to run and they’d probably be caught. What would he do the next time he saw someone being hung? What if it was someone else he knew? What if it were the Therentells?
But those were only maybes. The only thing he was certain of was that the last time he’d tried saving someone he cared deeply about, she’d ended up dead. He refused to ever feel that kind of hurt again.
“I can’t.” He looked at the floor. Behind him, Sunell gave a frustrated huff.
“After everything,” Isabell said. “After everything I’ve done—”
“Taking you south was one thing. What you ask now—”
“—everything I’ve given up for you!” She almost screamed it.
“Given up?” The anger…she was hiding something. This wasn’t about the wall or saving each other from the Wretched.
She waited so long before answering that Anaz thought she might not.
“I said yes.”
Anaz looked at her, then turned and looked at Sunell, who only shook her head, confused.
“To get you free,” Isabell said. “I had to agree to marry Earl Olisal. So you see, Anaz, I’ve sworn my own oath. Because I would rather die here disobeying my father, than let another child be hung for trying to run away. I did it for you, Anaz. And for them…and now you are throwing it all away.” Here eyes shone in the dim light.
Lelana gasped and covered her mouth.
She’d agreed. Anaz felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. Exhaustion washed over him, as if her new betrothal had drained every last bit of life from him.
“So you see, Anaz,” she said, quiet, her voice shaking, “you’re not the only one making sacrifices.”
She’d done this for him. For him and for everyone around her. Was he really going to throw her sacrifice away? Abandon her
?
She said yes…she’s getting married. The words ricocheted inside his chest.
He sighed and nodded.
Isabell rushed toward him and stopped herself at the last moment from leaping into him to give him a hug. Her face blushed crimson. She straightened and smoothed the front of her dress. “Thank you,” she said.
“See?” Sunell said to Isabell. “I told you he’s one of the good guys.”
The plan was simple, something Anaz had learned early on was a requirement for success. Sunell, being a page, was able to move freely between town and keep without suspicion. She would be the runner. Isabell would vet the families. She’d been in Fisher Pass often enough to know who might be loyal to her father and looking to betray them. Anaz would get them out of Fisher Pass, but that left one big question. Where do they go after that? North was the only option, but the roads would be too dangerous. That meant the mountains, specifically Tear Gully Pass and Marcen’s Hill. A family on foot would take a day, two, maybe, to get through these hills. And there were wiblins and folgots and grizzly bears.
“My mom can’t…” Lelana stopped and had to look at the floor while she composed herself.
“What about riding out?” Sunell asked.
“We can’t give them horses,” Isabell said. “They’ll be missed and too loud.”
“Could they get horses outside of town?” Lelana asked.
“The guards will never let us just take a herd of horses and tie them up outside the walls,” Isabell said.
“I have an idea for that,” Anaz said.
Isabell looked at Anaz for a long time and he thought he should look away, that it wasn’t appropriate to stare at each other like this, in front of people, or, really, ever, but he couldn’t give up those eyes. “Okay. What’s that thing you say? As the hsing-li wills it?”
“As the hsing-li wills it,” Anaz said.
Isabell took out a purse and Anaz could hear coins jingling inside.
“He won’t like it, but Evan Malic can’t pass up coin. This should buy you several nights at the Stop. We’ll get as many out of Fisher Pass as can go before…”
