by Kaleb Schad
The baron turned and looked up at the statue of Misfalnis. The squinting eyes. The gaping laughing mouth. Pointing fingers.
Her father drew Seven Claws. In the dim hall, Isabell could see the subtle blue glow of the Tul Casting on the blade’s edge.
“I will not be mocked in my own land.”
Seven Claws whistled as it sliced through the marble statue as if it were water. Misfalnis’s head crashed to the floor. Shrapnel skittered across the red stone.
Malic watched that bald bastard of a freak limp across the town square, the lady’s page, Sunell, in tow. Malic wondered if they were fucking. She was a bit young, but he’d had younger and when you were rutting away on top it didn’t much matter until you were done and then, well, let’s just say it got easier the more you did it. Not that Malic cared much who that freak or the snot-girl tossed off with, but dammit if that Therentell bitch didn’t leave Malic with an itch he couldn’t yet scratch. He’d tried, but the other girls around here, they just didn’t have the bite of that Therentell lass.
“Heard the Cartwells skedaddled,” Malic said.
“That’s what, forty-six?” Two Fingers asked. He mined in his mouth with both his thumb and forefinger and pulled something out and flicked it into the street. It was hot already, a damp, pressing heat that made breathing hard and patience harder.
“Fuck, you’re a piece of fucking work,” Malic said. He turned and spit. The heat inside the Sunflower Stop was unbearable already this morning, pushing them to the courtyard. They watched the few folk who moved around. Not many anymore, what with the baron sucking the fucking life out of the place, but if Malic had learned anything it was that nothing stayed the same forever, no matter how much you tried. He was a lot wiser than people gave him credit for.
“I hate that bald-headed bastard,” Malic said.
“Wants me to go squish him?” Two Fingers growled, watching Anaz and Sunell.
“He might be harder to squish than he looks, I suspect.”
“If he wants to make a fight of it, I’d be obliged. Eight years swinging my dick more than my sword leaves me a little irritable, if you know what I mean. The fuck we even still in this rat hole for?”
Malic looked at Two Fingers. He slouched in the dirt with his head resting against the gate post, eyes closed.
“Leave,” Malic said.
“‘Fore that wall catches us? Hell yeah.”
“Nove. Sala. Martell. How long did we live in each before Nader’s dogs sent us running?”
“Captain don’t give up easy, that’s true.”
“Each, what, a year? Been here eight and have you smelled a whiff of his tonic?”
“That shit did stink didn’t it?” Two Fingers said.
“And you ever hear someone ‘round here call me a whore’s son?”
“No, but I was there the last time someone did. Reckon not a lot of men would after that.”
Malic kneed Two Fingers in the side of the head and it bounced forward, then back and cracked against the post.
“Airim’s cock, Malic!”
“I don’t know who was fucking stupider. The orc that raped your mom or your mom. Nobody here would call me a whore’s son even if they knew the truth of it. It’s a nice town with nice people and that makes two motherfuckers like us the right folks to run it. And you want to walk away from that?”
“Can’t see the Wretched giving us a lot of choice,” Two Fingers said, but he didn’t put any life into it.
“Bah,” Malic said, “that baron is a lot of things, but he ain’t stupid. He tells people to stick around, it’s because he has a plan. And the only person who wants this town razed less than me is maybe him.”
He hated to admit it, but the half-orc might be right, though he’d never tell him that, of course. It was getting dangerous to stick around Fisher Pass. Malic had seen enough war in his time to know that none of it, whether against man or monster, was ever pleasant to be in. And he’d seen enough power-hungry men like the baron Blackhand to know they never stopped just one play out. They had all their moves planned twenty, thirty steps ahead. If Blackhand was keeping people in Fisher Pass, he had a reason. How sure could Malic be that the reason was to save the city, though? What if that shifty bastard had some game in mind that included letting the good suckers of Fisher Pass get skewered by the Wretched?
The freak and the girl turned a corner up by Henley’s butcher shop and disappeared into an alley. Malic smiled. He knew it.
They stayed there like that, listening to the crows over the gallows—those sad bastards were starting to stink something fierce—and swatting at mosquitos.
Nothing was turning out the way Malic had wanted it to. Ever since he was a little boy being towed along by his whore mom chasing army men, all he could remember ever wanting was to have a normal family. A dad who could keep the drunk army men from beating him. A mom who didn’t sell her crotch for supper. A house that didn’t have to be torn down every morning and pitched every night. Now, he gets to Fisher Pass, gets the closest he’s ever come to that dream and this shit happens.
He was done with excitement. Violence. All he wanted was quiet. Quiet and a woman to love and who loved him back.
He thought about Alysha Therentell. The shape of her breasts when she leaned over, those damn udders hanging bigger than a cow’s. And that weren’t no insult. Stuck in a marriage with a man who couldn’t even feed her, much less protect her. If he’d only had a little more time, he could have worked her free from Daveon. Could have completed his dream. She still had years of children in her. Could still start a new family. Hell, Malic would even take the bastard’s kids if that’s what he needed to do to get her.
To get her.
An idea clicked into place.
“Listen,” he said, “got something I need you to do tonight. I want you to head on out to the Therentells’ after we close up and that asshole Daveon is good and asleep.”
Two Fingers shook his head and tossed a stone into the street.
“Why we messing around with them, too?” he said. “King’s men be here any day. Get paid and get that shit head out of our hair.”
“You listening to me?” Malic raised his hand like he was going to backhand the beast. Malic had once watched Two Fingers get so angry he chewed clean through a man’s throat and separated his head from his body, but the way he cowered from Malic’s hand you’d think Malic was a hill troll about to pluck the half-orc’s noggin off. “The hell I need his senits for? What’s the one Airim-cursed name we hear almost as much as Blackhand?”
“I know, but—”
“That’s right. Therentell. A damn national holiday for that Rayen bastard. And here I got that hero’s baby brother washing people’s spit from spoons.”
“Might hear the name less if he weren’t here all the time telling the damn stories.”
“Might hear something smart once if you’d shut the fuck up and listen. If he pays me, I can’t get Sir Nattic and the baron to give me what I want. I’m done with that man working for me, but I ain’t done with the man’s wife, if you know what I mean.”
If he was going to do this, leave Fisher Pass and abandon all of this, he was going to do it with Alysha Therentell at his side. And he weren’t going to just take her. He already had enough heat chasing him. Didn’t need the king’s law in on the chase, too. But, if the Therentell’s couldn’t pay their debt, if Malic could show they had no way of repaying it, well, then a new kind of payment would have to be worked out.
Two Fingers craned his neck and looked up at Malic and he had to shield his eyes against the sun, but Malic wasn’t sure if he was squinting against the glare or against Malic’s notions. Who was that half-orc to judge? They’d been together too long, seen what each had done. Weren’t no use pretending to those kinds of scruples anymore.
Besides, what was a half-orc’s opinion compared to finally achieving your dreams by saving a woman from certain death from the Wretched…and a shitty husband?
<
br /> 48
Anaz leaned his head against the keep’s north wall. Even this late in the day it was hot. Or maybe that was his fever. Every morning he’d spent several hours inside the hsing-li chasing whatever this infection was, but it was like chasing a sneeze on the wind.
Isabell sat next to him and he tried to drink her in out of the corner of his eye, without being obvious about it. It had only been a couple days since he’d last seen her, but it felt like seeing her again for the first time. He was ashamed at how eagerly he’d said yes when Sunell asked him to meet Isabell that evening.
“There are a lot tonight,” Isabell whispered. The sun had set an hour past, but the sky held onto its ghost, a wheeze of violet to the west, peeking through an orchard’s pear trees.
Anaz nodded.
“There’ll be more guards tonight. My father increased the night patrol and Nattic is threatening to jail the family of any guard who lets another citizen past.”
“They hold on so tight, they don’t realize they’re holding nothing.”
“I like it when you talk like that,” Isabell said.
“Someone close to me used to say that.”
Isabell ran a hand through her hair, pushing loose strands away from her eyes, and when she set it down again it was touching Anaz’s, the edge of his glued to the edge of hers, an inch of touch. An inch of thrill.
“I know I’ve said it before, but I want to say it again. Thank you. Every night, these families…we get more and more trying to find Sunell, trying to get in line. The closer that wall gets, the more desperate they’re getting. I can’t tell you what it means to them, to me, that you do this.”
“There was a time I wished someone would do this for me,” Anaz said.
“What about all that staying unattached business?”
“It’s hard to know when being unattached and losing is worse than being attached and losing,” Anaz said and he closed his eyes against the sudden knife that sliced at the back of them.
Isabell touched his forehead. There was a strained fear in the tightness around her eyes. “This isn’t good, Anaz.”
“What is it? I can’t fight it. I’ve been trying, but…”
Her hand was like packed snow on his forehead and he felt something firm and bright roll around his heart and he thought maybe life was perfect right here, right now.
“It’s their disease. The Rot.” Her voice caught as she said it.
Anaz closed his eyes and nodded. He’d known, but hadn’t known what it meant.
“It hurts,” he whispered.
“You’re doing better than most. By the third or fourth day, most people had begun losing…” She couldn’t finish.
“You shouldn’t be near me.” He grunted as he tried to stand, but Isabell put a hand to his arm and pulled him back.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve had it, I think. There are some of us who caught it early and survived. Ever since, I’ve been able to be around the sick and not get it myself.”
“It can be survived?” Coming so close to admitting he might die from this disease put a new fear into him that he hadn’t expected. Sitting there, looking at her, he realized there might be reasons to stay alive. That is, until he remembered her betrothal.
“It can. I’d work in the physik tents in Knowles and down here in Fisher Pass. I couldn’t do much more than carry water and wash linens, but, in the end, that was mostly all the physiks did either.”
“Your father let you do that?”
“Once I was sick he wouldn’t talk to me.” She turned and looked out at the orchard. “He was more afraid of getting sick himself than of his daughter being seen helping the physiks, I guess.”
The sun moved behind the mountains and a cool violet shadow settled over them. The keep’s stone walls cooled quickly.
“It’s making it hard to use the hsing-li. I spend all of its energy fighting the disease and have little left at night when I need to get the families out.” Was he whining? What was he doing? Gods, he prayed she would never take her hand away.
Her eyes caught the whispering sunset and there was a tumbling mixture of worry and something else, something hungrier, in them.
Her hand slid from his forehead, to his cheek. Hesitated. Stayed there. Those fingertips. He watched as she struggled with something, her mouth opening to speak, closing. A sad smile.
“I’ll be okay,” he whispered.
“What are we doing?” she said.
He held her eyes. Clung to them. “Sitting.”
She smiled. Let her hand fall to his. Held it. “I know which is worse,” she said.
Anaz wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Being attached and losing or being unattached and losing,” she said. “I know which is worse.”
She leaned in towards him. As if she had her own gravity, he drifted to meet her. “Yeah?”
He kept his eyes open as long as he could, swallowing up her beauty until her kiss forced him to close them. What he lost in sight, he more than gained in smell. The lavender oil she used for perfume. The sweet taste of her lips. It was the softest thing he’d ever felt. Tender. Fearful.
They broke and she smiled at him and he smiled back, but she was crying.
“We can’t,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against his. “My father. If he finds out, he’ll kill you.”
“I know,” he said. He kissed her again. There was a communion in this that felt so right, felt certainly of the hsing-li, and he thought maybe he’d been wrong all these years. Maybe he’d learned the wrong lesson from the hsing-li.
They broke off again.
“Please,” she said, half laughing, half pleading. “There won’t be any begging, any negotiating. You’ll be dead before I can even say a word.”
“I know.”
Another kiss. Shorter this time. More playful. She bit his lower lip as they parted.
He grinned at her.
Then her smile faded and the glint in her eyes turned deadly pale and she said, “I’m betrothed to an Earl.”
Tears welled up and one broke loose and tracked down her cheek and she wiped at it and let out a shuddering breath.
“I know,” Anaz whispered.
And then he kissed her.
He thought of Reyn, tried to remember what her mouth had felt like, how different they were.
His heart leapt at the kiss.
Withered in self loathing.
“Fennel has never looked better,” Alysha said.
Daveon looked tired. He sat there at the table, his face buried in his hands, his palms grinding what little sleep he’d gotten out of his eyes. Alysha had tried to keep Elnis and Miria outside as much as possible that afternoon so Nikolai and Daveon could rest, but it had been so hot, she had heard Daveon tossing and turning every ten minutes. Nikolai, bless the boy, was still sleeping.
He lifted his head and gave her a half-hearted grin. “I felt her today. She’s going to drop that foal by tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. Her udder is full and she’s waxing. If Anaz brings anyone tonight—gods I hope he doesn’t—but if he does, maybe keep them outside of the barn. Let Fennel have peace so she can get through it all okay.”
She unwrapped a palm-sized chunk of salted ham and put it on a plate and slid it across the table for him. “The Nessens,” she said when he looked at her. “They gave it to me last night as thanks.”
She liked watching him eat, the way he slowed down and savored every bit of the meager meat. And why wouldn’t he? It was probably the first real meat he’d eaten in four days.
The peace in that room, the way it wrapped them together as if under a single blanket in winter, warming each other, Alysha dreaded shredding it with her next question, but she had no choice. It was time.
“Tomorrow is a week,” she said. She didn’t look at him, only at the table. He set his knife down on his plate and set his hands next to it.
“Yeah.”
“You said they’d be here i
n a week.”
“Hard to say for sure. The wall, it moves when and where it wants.”
She looked at him and he was looking at her and they sat there for a long time reading fears and promises in each other’s eyes.
From the bedroom, Elliot screeched, then laughed. Miria gave a soft giggle that warmed Alysha’s heart. Despite the nightmares, she was starting to thaw, starting to claw her way back from the blackness she’d survived.
“We have three of them to think about now,” Alysha said.
Daveon picked up the knife and cut another small bite. Slowly chewed. Nodded. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I have a feeling. Something big is going to happen tomorrow. Nikolai said the same thing this morning when we crested Ricken’s Ridge and saw the ranch. Something good is going to happen tomorrow.”
Was this a ploy? A way to avoid a fight and delay the inevitable? “We are packed. Just need the last-minute items. We could go tonight.”
“I think Airim has given him a gift,” he said. “Honestly. The other night, he said we should pause at a creek just a little longer and let the horses water. I had wanted to go, but he asked if we could sit for just another quarter sand. Know what came through trail on the other side of the creek? A ma grizzly and two cubs. Alysha, you should of seen those horses dancing. Took everything we had to keep them from running and that with fifty yards of water between us and them bears. Could you imagine what would have happened if we were on the other side by them?” He shook his head and grinned. “That boy’s got something, Alysha.”
She studied him. “Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
“Anaz brings a group tomorrow, we take every horse we have, Fennel and her new foal included, and we disappear into those mountains never to be seen again.”
Miria giggled and said something like “giddy-up” and then made a fake whipping sound.
Alysha stood and walked around the table. Daveon scooted back his chair and she sat on his lap sideways and smiled down at him. “Daveon Therentell, I’m proud of you,” she said.
