by Kaleb Schad
“What in Airim’s name—” Isabell said.
“Back, my lady,” Nattic said and he put his hand up as if he were going to push her.
“Halt and release her,” Isabell commanded.
“She’s under arrest. Treason.”
Isabell’s mouth felt dusty. Treason. He knew. How did he know? More so, what did he know?
“By the power of my father, Lord Baron Blackhand, you will release her, Sir Nattic, or I will have you in the gallows by morning.”
“He will do no such thing.” Her father stepped out of the room behind Nattic.
Isabell felt his voice drip down over her lungs, making it impossible to breathe. Her father! He knew. Oh gods, he knew!
“I should have expected,” he said. “Rot has a way of infecting. Is this page girl the reason you’ve turned spoiled? Has she been feeding my daughter lies against me? One thing is certain, once in the Maw, she will tell me. Nattic will have the tools to soften her will and we will know who she has been working with. The girl wasn’t alone, that much we know.”
Isabell caught Sunell’s movement from the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see her bite Nattic’s arm. She buried her teeth to the gums in the knight’s arm. Blood bubbled up.
“Run!” Isabell screamed.
She leaped forward and smashed her fist into Nattic’s nose. Something cracked—Isabell’s knuckles, the knight’s nose, she couldn’t tell.
Sunell fell to the ground. Scrambled up. Ran. One of the knights jumped for her, but she dropped to her knees and slid under his grip, then was back on her feet. To the stairs.
Nattic stumbled backwards into the baron, blood puddling from his nose over his hands. Isabell punched the knight in his gut. She shouted in shock, not realizing he wore his mail under his tunic. Her hand tore on the steel links.
One of the other knights stepped forward, but stopped short of grabbing Isabell, unsure what to do.
“Enough!” her father roared. He grabbed Nattic by the head and threw him sideways, back into Sunell’s chamber, then he jumped forward and drove his fist into Isabell’s stomach.
She dropped to the floor, choking on vomit, trying to remember how to breathe.
At the stairs, out of the side of her vision, she saw a knight snag one of Sunell’s braids. She screamed and flopped backwards, her feet skating out from under her.
Her father jerked her head up by her hair, cranked it so she faced him. Hellfire boiled in his eyes.
“I would have went for your face,” he snarled, his breath hot and wet, “but I wouldn’t want you scarred for your new husband.”
“You’re right,” Isabell gasped. “She wasn’t alone.”
“No, my lady!” Sunell screeched, trying to sit up. The knight shoved her back against the steps.
“It’s been me, Father. This whole time. It’s been me helping the people of Fisher Pass escape.” She looked at Nattic out of the corner of her eyes and laughed. “It’s been me making the two of you look like idiots in front of your men. Not Sunell. Nobody but me.”
The baron pulled hard breaths in through his nose. In. Out.
“Do it,” Isabell whispered. “Kill me. All your plans. All your ambitions.” She blew out a puff of breath.
His grip tightened. Isabell felt her scalp pulling from her head. She cried out.
“My own—”
His breathing. In. Out.
Hot and stinking and frantic.
”—daughter.”
And then he spit in her face. A fat glob of mucus landed in her eye, dribbled down the bridge of her nose.
What was he looking for, back there, down through the aspen firs and the white pines? He hadn’t been able to see his ranch or his family for over an hour and yet he was looking behind him so much he wondered if he shouldn’t just turn in his saddle. That would be a dandy thing, wouldn’t it? The new Airim’s Lance, the horse breeder, who didn’t know his horse’s ass from its head.
They’d climbed into a burn from last summer, hoary moss and dry rocks. Skeleton trees spearing limbs straight for your eyes, deadfall crisscrossing and sending the riders scattered, trying to weave their way through the carnage. Even here, leagues from the nearest humanoid, death swathed the country. Death, a claw trap set the moment you’re born and certain to snap shut.
These weren’t the thoughts he should have been having. It shouldn’t have felt like this. He pulled at the cloak again to loosen it from choking him.
“Three of them,” a knight said as he cantered up next to Daveon. He thought the man had introduced himself as Sir Yorjan. Yerkin? Something like that. Daveon found it was easier to remember them by their mounts than their names. This one rode a beautiful piebald with a white speckled rump and black mane.
They were crossing a plateau and, in the moonlight, Daveon could barely see the back of the herd ahead of him. Behind him climbed the ursinine and the Daughter of Airim. Syla continuously swiveled her ears back at the bearlike creature, turning her head to sniff. Wary, but not panicked. Steady as she goes. Daveon was proud of her. He leaned forward and rubbed her neck.
“Three what?” He returned to facing forward.
“Fletchers at that farm south of here. Where you saved the girl.”
“Oh.” Daveon gave a small sigh. He’d heard someone say once that no matter where you run to, you’ll still be there and he thought maybe that he hadn’t appreciated the wisdom in that. You’ll still be there. And so will your lies. “Just two,” he said.
“Plenty of men can’t say they’ve taken even one, so fists to you.”
“Lucky, I guess.”
“Lucky.”
“I guess.”
The ursinine grunted a low rumbling, rolling noise that made Daveon’s guts jump. He turned and looked at it and the girl looked back at him, her eyes two points of orange under her hood.
“Sure is a fearsome mount for a healer,” Daveon said, dropping his voice so it wouldn’t carry. “She seems angry.”
“Stonehome?” Yorjan said.
“Is that her name? She hasn’t introduced herself.”
“Ella Stonehome.” Yorjan chuckled and looked back at Ella, then leaned over to Daveon. “She ain’t no healer, son.”
“Isn’t that the symbol of a Daughter of Airim?”
“She sewed it on upside down for a reason. She’s Airim’s something, but she ain’t his healer. Not like the others. She says Airim is fed up. Furious. And she’s his ass kicking made manifest.”
“Wait,” Daveon said. “I think I have heard of her. That’s the Ella Stonehome? Destroyed three Wallwraiths and four Fletchers all on her own at Merry’s Lane? Been raiding up and down the wall for two years straight almost single handedly?”
Yorjan nodded, then dropped his voice to a whisper and Daveon had to strain to hear him against the soft clopping of their horse’s hooves. “She came from the other side.”
Daveon looked at Sir Yorjan for a long moment and the knight nodded. “The other side.”
“Breeding hall. Burned the traitorous breeder and half the Wretched guards with him. Brought her sister and a gnome minstrel out with her.”
“Great Airim.” Daveon wanted to turn and look at her again, but didn’t dare…didn’t know if he’d ever dare again. “So the halls are real. I always wondered if they were just stories, like the Mapclaw Man or Winkles.”
“We are livestock to them. Something to be bred, butchered and buttered up for supper.”
“Yeah, but we don’t eat our cattle’s souls.”
“There is that.”
An hour later Daveon was falling asleep in his saddle. He’d been on a horse now for nearly a day straight and he worried for Syla. She’d been through too much, risen to every ask he’d made of her, to have him push her to floundering now. And she still had to pull a wagon full of family to safety tonight.
Ella rode beside him. They picked their way down the western slope, strands of whitebark woven across the dark face, the reek of el
k piss everywhere. It always amazed Daveon how the fires would suddenly stop as if an invisible hand had dropped and said halt.
He looked behind him again.
“You miss them,” Ella said.
“Me?” Daveon looked around and realized he was alone with her. Syla kept trying to side step, but Daveon corrected her with the reins. Though, truth be told, he wanted to side step as well.
“Have you ever been away from them before?”
“Yeah.”
“Hard?”
“Some men, they count the days until they’re home and then when they’re home, they start counting the days until they can leave again.”
“We get what we want and we want something else. That you?”
“No. I guess maybe? I don’t know.”
After a moment, she said, “Before leaving town, I heard about you and your brother at Lindisfarne.”
“Oh,” he said. He felt like an empty wineskin, everything that had been holding him up leeched away by the lie.
“An old man at the inn, Elliot, I think he said his name was. He overheard us say we were heading out here and jumped at the chance to tell us about you before we met.”
He gave a half grin, looked at his hands. “That sounds like Elliot.”
“Why do you lie about it?”
Daveon wasn’t certain he’d heard her right. His pulse pounded in his ears and he looked at her.
“About Lindisfarne,” she said. “He said you charged into the gap with another Therentell, Rayen, your brother. That you were able to get out before the gap closed, but weren’t able to save your brother and you don’t like talking about it because of that.”
“That’s what—”
“But that’s a lie.”
Daveon felt his face burning. He shot glances forwards and back to see if anyone listened. They were alone. “Look, I—”
“Do you lie because you think what you did wasn’t worthy?”
“What I…” He stared at her, not knowing what to say. Who was this girl? How could she know? Nobody knew the truth except for Alysha. Had Alysha said something to her before they’d left? But why would she do that? How could she have done that? She’d refused to come out to talk to them, had stayed in their room crying.
“Because it was,” Ella said. She wouldn’t look away. Those eyes. The orange glint like fire. But there was something else about them. Something familiar…
“Daughter,” he said. “I’m sorry. I don’t…I don’t know how you know, but you’re—”
“You haven’t recognized me this whole time.”
No. It can’t be. But she…
“After my father died and that Fletcher was at the bottom of the stairs, I knew we were going to die. My sister and me…and you. And I prayed to Airim. I’d been praying to him every day and every night for two months before that, begging him to grant me his magic, to turn me into a Daughter of Airim so I could heal the soldiers. I thought maybe I could make a difference in the war, help keep the warriors in the battle longer.”
The world pinched around Daveon’s vision and all he could see was her face, only she was eleven summers old instead of twenty and she was holding her younger sister, shoving her behind her, shielding her. Her little voice, “I’m scared.”
“But then you looked at us and I saw something happen inside of you. Almost as if a fire had erupted in you. It terrified me. And then you attacked the Fletcher. I’ve seen a lot of men fight the Wretched, Daveon Therentell, and I’ve yet to see someone move the way you did. You could out fight any one of these Lances and that’s no boast. It was beautiful in its ferocity, the way you gave the Fletcher not a second to think, to attack, but could only defend itself. I saw something that day that changed my life forever. I saw a man make a Fletcher be afraid.”
Ella’s face twisted and Daveon realized he was crying.
“From that day forward I prayed harder than I’d ever prayed in my life. We were foolish girls and ran out of that cellar and were captured almost immediately. Spent a couple years in a holding camp until my blood came, then they took both my sister and me to the breeding hall to wait our turn. In that entire time, I prayed with every single breath I took that Airim would grant me his power, but now I didn’t want to heal anymore, Daveon. You’d changed that for me forever. No. Now I prayed that someday I could put the fear of Airim into these monsters. Just like you.” Her voice dropped a notch and she growled those last words. Syla’s ears twitched and she looked at Ella.
Daveon’s face felt numb, as if he’d been slapped repeatedly. Maybe he had. It was true. It was her. She’d been the girl in the cellar. The place he’d hidden. He’d saved Ella Stonehome. In his cowardice, he’d saved Ella Stonehome. Her name rolled back and forth across his mind, the only thing he could hold on to.
The ursanine lifted its head and sniffed, looked out into the purple shadows of the forest. Syla snorted.
Ella pulled on the ursanine’s reins and leaned forward to scratch its neck. She smiled at Daveon. “You shouldn’t lie about Lindisfarne, Daveon Therentell,” she said. “I’ve learned a lot about how Airim works since then. He didn’t answer my prayers that day or any day until years later. It took two years of seeing what happens to us behind the wall. It took my little sister nearly being raped by the breeder, watching pregnant women who’d lost any semblance of a soul even before the Wretched took it carry their children, knowing they would never get to hold the child, that it would be sacrificed before it had even lived a day… It took all of that before I was ready. But I held one thing in my mind every single minute of every single day while I prayed to Airim. You. The fear that Fletcher felt. They can be killed and they can feel fear and that means we don’t have to. I’m here now to show Humay that. Airim put me through all of that for a reason. He put your brother where he needed to be. And he put you in that cellar for a reason, Daveon.”
“Oh, lord,” Daveon whimpered. Snot bubbled from his nose. He wiped his sleeve across it and then drove his palms into his eyes. He couldn’t stop shaking, the wracking sobs that tore out of him, releasing years of agony, years of guilt. Years of lies.
All this time, he’d carried the certainty that he’d let his brother die for nothing. That he’d abandoned his family when they needed him most, had let his fear lead him into an unforgivable sin of betrayal. That he’d failed at his most holy of duties. But it wasn’t true. He had done something. He had made his own difference, had answered a different duty.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Daveon felt like he could breathe.
“I think he put us here today for a reason, too.”
Slowly, Daveon felt himself settling. He leaned away from Ella and put a finger to a nostril and blew, then the other and wiped at his face. “Why?” he whispered.
“Something has changed in you tonight,” she said. “You’ve left—”
Syla crouched and jumped sideways and Daveon shouted and snatched at the reins, clamping his knees to hold himself in the saddle.
“The hell was that about?” he shouted.
The ursanine bellowed.
The horses ahead of them split, no sound, just the frantic pounding of hooves in a dead gallop.
And then the Wretched were on them, pouring out of the trees.
57
Elliot Summers was tying his horse to the hitching pole when Anaz stepped out of the Sunflower Stop.
He’d spent the afternoon inside the hsing-li waging war against the Rot. Maybe it was that he’d finally decided to leave, or maybe it was just coincidence, but he thought he might be winning the battle. He’d been able to capture more of the disease than in times past, purge it. He’d by no means cleared the sickness from him, but for the first time he thought he might survive.
And still, words like cowardice and love and keeping thrummed inside Anaz’s head alongside the Rot’s headache. Be okay? No, he would never be okay. Would never be able to be okay.
“You look for the road,” Elliot said.
/> Anaz looked up at the sky, gauging the sun, then said, “It’s time.”
“Them garrison folk won’t be keen on that idea.”
“I had a mind to not ask them,” Anaz said.
Elliot finished his half-hitch and dropped the rope and brushed his leathery hands against his hose and nodded. Anaz liked the man’s look, thick grey hair, years of smiling etched into the skin around his gentle eyes. He’d seen him in the inn every night and never once had he seen the man morose in his cups. Even alone, at the bar, he’d nurse his drink and smile absently. Now, with his eyes focused on Anaz, he realized the man was many years older than he’d appeared.
“People around here, they felt better off with you around it seems. Got me thinking maybe you were good for a lot of people who didn’t want to be around, I mean. I’ll be sorry to see you go. So will Therentell. A number of people, I suppose. ”
“Being sorry to see someone go becomes a part of life when you are surrounded by people.”
“True enough,” Elliot said. He stared at Anaz for a long moment, turned and looked behind him, back at his horse. “I’ve lost some. Most, truth be told. Henrietta and Fenten and Carls. Got a daughter can’t walk, can’t feed herself, can’t clean herself or use a chamber pot ‘cuz of the Rot and all. But you know what? We both agree it might be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”
Listening to him, Anaz felt a pulling. Something being heaved off of his heart, uncovered, and it terrified him.
“We never spoke nice before this all. The both of us certain how the other should be. Just mean enough to say it out loud. And I mean loud. Now? Every night we tell stories together. I tell her what I hear in town. She tells me something she made up in her head that day. The damnedest most blood bubbling stories you ever heard. Sometimes I can’t sleep I’m so excited by her tale. Yes, sir.” Elliot scratched at his horse’s muzzle. “Loss can leave a hole, you ain’t kidding. But I ain’t crossed a hole yet that can’t be filled with something else. Reckon you just gotta’ find the right stuff to fill it with.”
