The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  “Hurry, Nikolai,” Alysha whispered. She shot Malic a panicked look, but the innkeeper was watching Two Fingers stomp her husband to death.

  “Pa needs to sharpen his knife,” Nikolai said.

  Another kick forced Daveon to close his eyes, but he saw red instead of black and when he tried to open them again, only his left one opened and he was looking at Elliot now. The man’s glassy stare. Daveon looked at his friend and the wrinkles around those stone marbles in his sockets. And then he saw Elliot’s sword. Right there, his fingers almost touching it, as if his friend were handing it to him.

  Elliot, a friend even in death.

  Two Fingers stopped his kicking and stepped back, sucking at the damp summer air. “Alright,” he said. He gripped his sword again and gave it a great jerk and it screeched free. “Airim’s cock, I missed this, Malic,” Two Fingers said. “Wherever we end up next, let’s mix a bit more o’ this into things, eh?”

  “Just hurry,” Malic said.

  Two Fingers raised the greatsword over his head like an axe. A lumberjack. A feller of lives.

  Elnis wailed one long, jagged animal sound.

  Lightning blazed white across the room. Black shadows sudden, sharp as swords, and as certain of death, made mystery of the room’s contours.

  Daveon stretched his fingers. Touched the hilt of Elliot’s sword.

  Whether Miria gave the spur or Red had just had enough, Daveon would never figure out, though it would fill his thoughts late at night for years to come. Did that old bastard of a horse give in and decide to like him after all?

  Red snorted, giving that leathery flapping sound of his, and leaped forward, bearing all one-hudred-eighty-six stones of his weight into the half-orc’s back.

  Daveon’s hand closed around Elliot’s sword.

  Two Fingers yelped. His eyes bloomed, too much experience to not realize what was about to happen.

  Daveon rose to his elbow and met the half-orc’s fall with Elliot’s blade and felt the man’s belly give way, taking the sword as a lover might, deep and completely. Slowly.

  Two Fingers eased himself to a knee. He looked at Daveon. He coughed—his blood freckling Daveon’s face.

  Two Fingers’s eyes lolled. Looked at the ceiling. Now the floor. To Malic. Back to Daveon. He smiled. “That,” he whispered, “was a damn fine fight.”

  He fell sideways. His head landed in Elliot’s lap of entrails and there the two lay, staring into an unknown known only to them.

  74

  How time could change. A lifetime lived entire in the looming lightning.

  Isabell peered between the soldiers’ shoulders and she watched the space where he had been and she maybe breathed, but she maybe didn’t, and she couldn’t have said if she stood like that, a sentry of dread, for a heartbeat or for all of her heartbeats.

  There was no sound. The bonewall ceased its rattle and the thunder held its complaints. Not even the rain whispered.

  And then she saw his hand.

  Anaz reached onto the bridge and his fingers found the space between stones and clung.

  “Great Airim,” one of the soldiers whispered.

  Isabell pushed between them. She reached Anaz and saw Seven Claws dug into the stone bridge beneath him. She knelt, gripped his wrist and hauled him to her and he pulled Seven Claws from the stone. There they knelt, holding each other. Isabell felt the rattle of his heart in his chest, the frantic beating and ragged breaths and she didn’t know if they were hers or his so close were they.

  “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew it.”

  “That’s two,” he said.

  “Two?”

  “Times you saved me.”

  She leaned away long enough to give him a smile. “It’s getting a little old, truth be told. I thought you’d be better by now.”

  Her smile froze when she saw his face. His eyes were glassy and she could smell his breath and her stomach clenched. It was a smell she knew too well, one that had wrapped entire homes and physik tents and villages for years. The Rot. It was fully in him.

  He’s going to die. Dear Airim, don’t let him die. Not after all this.

  His head bobbed and he lifted it and she watched as somewhere he gathered together his remaining strength and stood. She stood with him, holding his arm.

  Her father’s men ran out onto the bridge, surrounding them.

  “Well,” Malic said.

  The febrile choir from outside stole into the Sunflower Stop and mixed with the sounds of the dwindling fire and the dog-growling thunder and, to Daveon, it seemed to sing a song of loss. Malic’s eyes reddened, glistened.

  Something else under the screams from outside. The sound of men shouting commands, calm, orderly. The ring of metal armor and barded horses. Daveon recognized it from his short days in the army. Someone’s soldiers had arrived, were battling the Wretched.

  “Well,” Malic said again. He moved towards Daveon. Drew his shortsword.

  Daveon tried to move, but his left leg was stiff as a tree stump, unyielding. He could feel blood leaking from the gash in his side and he still wasn’t able to open his right eye. The word “limits” came to mind.

  Malic nudged Red and the horse side stepped and his hooves clacked calmly on the floor and Miria whimpered at the man, but he gave her no mind.

  He stopped short of Daveon. He looked at Two Fingers.

  “He…,” Malic said. A tear cut free from a duct and rolled along the base of his nose.

  Daveon couldn’t stay braced on his elbow any longer. He fell back. His head thudded on the floor.

  “This is not how I saw my life going,” Malic said. He didn’t take his eyes from Two Fingers. “I thought, with the dues I payed growing up, I thought I’d come into fair treasure for my sunset years. Hell, a whore ma chasing army cocks or cooking when she wasn’t fucking and the way that knight crushed my left hand after catching me stealing. Weren’t nothing but a pear, but he said it the small sins that Airim fear the most and wouldn’t none believe me when I told him I’s left handed and begged him, begged him, Therentell, to do my right, but he thought I’s lying to him. Hadn’t never heard of a left-handed fellow before. I thought, them’s dues enough. Aren’t they, Therentell?” He didn’t try to hold back the tears, letting them suspend, pregnant, from his nose and his chin, then glitter away to the floor.

  “Seems to me—” Something spasmed in Daveon’s belly and he curled up, lifting his shoulders off the floor, then lay back and gasped. When he could speak again, he said, “Seems to me, we have a lot in common, Evan.” He rolled his head and tried to look at Alysha, but she wasn’t at the table anymore. He didn’t have the strength to look around for her, held his eyes to where she’d been. “I think maybe the treasure we’ve wanted has always been right in front of us, Evan, put there by Airim for the taking, but we’ve been so caught up in our own reflections we couldn’t see nothing else. We just couldn’t see it.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Malic said.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “We shoulda’ talked more. When we had the time, I mean.”

  “I done enough talking, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” Malic said. “None of them true?”

  Daveon chuckled and it turned to a cough.

  Outside thunder rolled around.

  “Not a word. Not the ones about me, at least.”

  “Way you fought, well, I’d of thought maybe one or two were.”

  From somewhere Daveon found a last puddle of strength and he pushed himself backwards, dragging Elliot’s sword with him, until he was to the hearth. He lifted himself up and sat against the stone. The fire’s heat baked the back of his head.

  Malic followed him and stood straddling Daveon’s legs. He wasn’t crying anymore. He examined Daveon and they looked at each other and Daveon thought it might be the first time he’d ever locked eyes with Evan Malic and not had to look away.

  “No,” Daveon said. “None of them were, but this one is: I’m willing t
o die for my family.”

  “Well,” Malic said. “That’ll work out fine.”

  Alysha padded up behind Malic barefoot and placed Daveon’s dagger to the man’s throat. An unholy realization made rigid Malic’s entire body.

  “And I’m willing to kill for mine,” she whispered.

  A red mouth opened in Malic’s throat.

  75

  There was so little left inside of Anaz that he thought he might be more emptiness than form. He huddled inside the hsing-li, letting the energy support him, knowing the moment he let it go, it would take him down with it.

  He counted. Eight soldiers. The bridge was wide enough that the knights were able to surround him and Isabell on all sides. The baron stepped into the circle, facing them.

  “Come away, Isabell,” he said.

  Anaz touched Isabell’s shoulder.

  “Father,” she said, “you must have realized by now. I’ll never again do your will.”

  “My will?”

  “Yours or anyone’s not my own.”

  “How is it you have not yet realized?” he said. “You have no will, but mine. Are nothing, but mine.”

  “Lord Blackhand,” Anaz said. His voice was weak, barely carrying above the wind. “I must thank you.”

  “Thank me.”

  “I am young, but somehow, I have spent the last seven years of my life thinking I had learned what it means to be happy. You and your beautiful daughter have taught me anew.”

  “I’m happy for you. Guards, kill him.”

  Anaz held his hand up and the soldiers paused, looking to each other.

  “Permit me to tell you a story,” he said. “I used to love a woman deeply. She came into my world, bringing with her a past I thought I had lost forever and she saved my soul. Quite literally. I had survived through murder for years and she helped me to remember the gift of the hsing-li that is life. But she died for her efforts, used by a man not unlike you, Lord. A man who had nothing, but thought to possess everything. When she died, she took with her what little true happiness I had ever felt. It was a felling strike I would not rise from for seven years, until two weeks ago when I met your daughter.”

  He looked at Isabell. Water fell from her hair, down her face, mingled with her tears.

  “You see,” he said, “I thought the hsing-li was teaching me a new lesson. To grasp, to hold, to struggle, these are efforts at control when there is nothing to control, only an illusion of control. Instead, I thought, we should never struggle, never grasp. Never hold. I thought the hsing-li was telling me to try to keep nothing. And in not keeping, nothing could be lost. That this was the path to happiness. Or, if not happiness, peace. But it wasn’t. Do you know what it was the path to? I see it in you, too, though different.”

  “You’re insane,” the baron said.

  “You see it.”

  “I see a freak talking nonsense, who has twisted my daughter’s mind with his riddles.”

  “The path led to a death worse than these creatures we fight tonight.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It is only through careful effort that we can find happiness. To struggle when there is someone struggling back for you. To rise when another begs you to rise. To bring to bear the might of your being in the name of, not self, but another. This is the lesson the hsing-li wanted me to learn all these long years. I needed your daughter and her page to teach me.”

  He reached out and touched Isaabell under the chin and he drew her face to him.

  “You have reminded me that there are right times to fight. That there are things worth fighting for.”

  The kiss he and Isabell shared was long and soft and put into Anaz a trickling thrill that skated through his entire body, perhaps because he knew it would be their last.

  When finally they broke, he whispered, “Thank you.”

  “You have stolen her,” the baron said, his voice low, flat, as if naming a type of stone.

  “Father,” Isabell said. “Haven’t you been listening? I was never yours to lose. You can only keep that which wants to be kept.”

  “You are a Blackhand!” he screamed. “Without us, without your marriage to Olisal, there is nothing! There is no Humay. There is no future. Nothing.”

  “The pendulum swings,” Anaz said. “Where I took on too little, you take on too much. The hsing-li will see to Humay. The hsing-li asks you only to see to those around you, and they to those around them. And in that way, a wall of living souls will be knitted greater than one of bones and the unliving.”

  Anaz spread his arm out into the open night, gesturing at the wall and as he looked down into Fisher Pass, he saw something that, once he knew it wasn’t a fevered hallucination, cut a smile across his face. Soldiers, hundreds of men in steel and surcoats, mounted and afoot, poured through the lanes of Fisher Pass killing Wretched. He saw sorcery flames and burning arrows and now thought he could hear the confident shouts of men leading other men to war. They faced the wall and he saw the bones rolling backward under the onslaught.

  The others, seeing Anaz’s smile, also turned.

  “The Airim’s Lances,” Isabell whispered.

  “The king is here?” the baron said and his voice cracked.

  “It is over, Father,” Isabell said. She lowered her sword and took Anaz’s hand. “It is over.”

  When the baron looked at them, Anaz felt a great ache stretch his heart. The baron would never give up. He would order his men to kill them.

  “Don’t,” Anaz said.

  “It is only beginning,” the baron said. “The king changes nothing.”

  Anaz released Isabell’s hand. Lifted Seven Claws at the baron. “I will struggle. She is worth the struggle.”

  The baron looked at his daughter. “On that, we agree. Men, she can be scratched, but she cannot be killed.”

  There was no command. One moment they stood, coiled snakes, watching each other with unblinking eyes and the next they were movement.

  Time stretched, the hsing-li a rippling pond of multicolored energy. Ribbons of connection between the soldiers and the rain and the stone bridge, between Anaz and Isabell and Sunell and yes, the baron. Anaz wasn’t sure if he was ready for this. The Wretched, they had not been of the fabric. Killing them had been the opposite of killing the living, making whole where the Wretched left gaps in the hsing-li’s net. This, killing these soldiers, would tear at the pattern, tear at his own connection to it. Yet, he knew it was right, knew that to leave Isabell to them would be a greater sin.

  Together they moved as if alone, two dancers in a silent hall, a choir only they could hear. They pressed together, back to back, and Anaz felt something he had not known in nearly a decade—connection. Safety. A half of his whole.

  The soldiers threw stones, tried kicking and sweeping Anaz’s feet out from under him. They lunged and hacked and screamed, but they might as well have screamed at the thunder for all their diminished effect. Anaz and Isabell were unmovable by mortals, unshakeable. Together, they were moved by something akin to love, yes, maybe even was love, but also something else.

  They were moved by right.

  It wasn’t fair. Moving along the bridge, the stones slick with rain, the staccato flashes of lightning, these were things Anaz had dealt with his entire life fighting in the Pit. In many ways, he was more at home here, in this moment, than he had been in the seven years since winning his freedom.

  Yet, every movement stole from him and he felt the loss as sure as he felt the loss of his finger. He’d reached the end. For too long tonight, he’d been holding the hsing-li, working it, molding it, reshaping reality around him. While he’d been at work on the outside, the disease had nearly finished its own work on the inside. He could feel it completing its own purpose. Every breath became shallower, space where air once was now filled with fluid. Every swing of his sword, every jarring lance into the soldiers’ armor, was a cut into his own life.

  As the hsing-li wills it, he thought. He had this last dance w
ith Isabell, at least. At least that could never be taken from him.

  And so they fought. Seven Claws was a magnificent sword, a sword, like Anaz, at one with its purpose. A soldier came at him with vicious, piercing thrusts, a hummingbird with bladed beak. Anaz backpedaled, chiming steel on steel as he parried, then scooped up a shovelful of water with the hsing-li and threw it into the man’s eyes, followed closely by Seven Claws. The spiked crossguard speared into the soldier’s face, the far side of the blade tenting the chain cowl out the back of his skull.

  Isabell, fast at work with three of her own soldiers, wrapped up Anaz’s fresh kill in her free arm and twirled it around her, as if changing dancing partners. She flung the corpse at one of the three chasing her. It hit a soldier and Isabell jumped onto the corpse’s back, shoving them both from the bridge. The falling soldier’s scream disappeared into the void.

  The hsing-li rippled behind Anaz. Without turning, he rolled Seven Claws in his grip and stabbed backwards, felt the moment’s protest from surcoat and chainmail, then the ceding flesh beneath. Blood sprayed across the back of his head.

  The two soldiers facing Isabell found their footing. They spaced themselves just far enough apart that Isabell couldn’t reach both, had to pivot madly to block them. The third time the soldiers made their hacking attacks, Isabell was only able to block one. She caught the blade on her own, was starting to turn her head towards the other, her body years behind, when a wall of ice jutted skyward from the bridge. The soldier’s attack deflected off the sudden barrier and his momentum carried him into the new wall face first.

  A hole opened in the ice wall and Anaz stabbed Seven Claws through it, into the soldier’s chest. He pulled out his sword and let the wall dissolve. Ruby colored water fell to the bridge. The soldier canted left, a softening of flesh and purpose, and slapped flat into the pooled rainwater.