by Rachel Dunne
She tried to tell herself he wasn’t, but truth was, she’d seen lesser wounds kill people. Scal had a big gash in his side, curving around his ribs and down to his stomach so you could see bone and other pieces that weren’t ever supposed to see daylight. She could remember being surprised, after Scal’d fought half the North, that he hadn’t been hurt at all. Turned out he was just real good at hiding his hurts, because she hadn’t had time to even try to count the other scratches and pokes all over his body before they’d packed up that bad wound and gotten moving. And since then, it’d just been moving, trying to find their way to anywhere before . . . well, before.
Sometimes, when the wind died real sudden like the last breath leaving a person’s lungs, Rora could hear the merra praying soft but steady, words about warmth and the heart’s fire that sounded small surrounded by so much snow. Rora’d never had much cause to thank the Parents, but she’d never cursed ’em much either. Maybe she should’ve done more of one or the other.
With the sky and the ground the same color, Rora didn’t notice anything different at first. It wasn’t until Aro called, “Rora?” that she noticed the bit of yellow licking at the clouds, a fire not quite ready to die, but having a hard time finding anything more to eat.
They stopped for the first time in what seemed like forever. It felt wrong, with Scal behind her maybe-dead. It made her twitchy. Squinting through the snow and the smoke, Rora could pick out a wooden wall, part of it burned, part of it still burning, most of it still standing as far as she could tell. “You think it’s a town?” she asked. “Did we make it through the North?”
“The camp,” the witch said quietly, his face pressed up against Aro’s back, eyes squeezed shut. “It’s burning again.”
She could remember passing by the convict camp on their way farther north; part of it’d been burning then, too, a different chunk of the wooden wall. Scal hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near it. Aro’d said he felt guilty, leaving the place to burn, not knowing if there was anyone hurt. Joros’d scoffed at him and said even if they were all dead, they were convicts anyway, and Aro’d bristled at that. Most of the Scum back in Mercetta, most everyone they’d known in the capital, would be judged convicts if they were ever unlucky enough to get caught. Scal had called the place Aardanel and moved away from it like he could feel the flames, even far away as they’d been.
On the way into the North, Aardanel’d been a handful of days after the last village. That meant they were more days away from any help for Scal. Rora couldn’t decide if that made her want to throw up, or cry.
“How is it still burning?” Aro asked. It was a thing he was good at—asking stupid questions when he was too scared to let there be silence.
“It’s not,” Rora said. “It’s burning again.” The witch’d said those same damn words a moment before, but Aro couldn’t let a silence stand, couldn’t let smarter people take any time to think . . . But it made something rise up in Rora’s throat—not puke, lucky enough, but something that tasted real close to hoping. “Better question is why would you burn a place twice, if you’d already killed everyone and got everything you wanted?”
“Because Northmen are brutal bastards.” Aro glanced guiltily back at Scal, but he didn’t apologize. It was true enough, and Scal sure as hells wasn’t going to argue.
“Or because everyone’s not dead,” Rora said, excitement rising up along with the hope. “You keep attacking a place because you need to kill everyone before you can get to what’s inside.” Her fingers ached with how hard she was squeezing them around the reins. “Aro, there might be people there still. There might be help.”
Aro stared with her at the burning chunk of wall, both of ’em trying to see through the fire and the smoke. “Or there might be Northmen,” he said softly.
“There might. But before you wanted to go check and make sure everyone was okay, yeah? Better later’n not ever.” Rora glanced over her shoulder; beyond Scal’s slumped form, she could just make out Joros and the merra, far enough back that maybe they would’ve heard if she shouted, but probably not. Even though Joros was the head of their group, she didn’t see much point in wasting time waiting for him to catch up so he could make the choice she already knew he’d make. On the way into the North, he’d wanted to stop at the camp just as bad as Aro. “Let’s go see if there’s anyone alive,” she said. It took some persuading to get her horse to pick its feet up again, but it started dutifully forward and Rora’s numb fingers pulled at Scal’s horse, towing it behind.
By the time they got close, Joros and the merra had caught up, drawn by the flames. Rora could see people scurrying around the fiery wall, throwing buckets of snow. Already, the fire was beginning to die down. Even though they were still a ways off, Rora heard the clanking of chains.
They reacted fast enough, especially considering how much of a distraction the fire was. Rora and the others hadn’t gotten much closer before a group split off and formed a line, and then there were some scattered thunks, and suddenly the ground in front of Rora had a handful of crossbow bolts in it. That made her pull up sharply, because even if those hadn’t been great shots, she knew the second round’d be better.
Joros stood up in his stirrups and cupped both hands near his mouth to bellow, “Hold!”
No more bolts got fired, and after a moment, a voice came over the snows: “Your business?”
“We’ve a wounded man,” Joros called back. “We seek shelter.”
They took their time about it, huddled together and talking, and all the while Rora couldn’t help glancing at Scal, at how still he was. If he was breathing, they were small breaths, so small they hardly moved him. The merra rode up next to him, placed her hand on his bowed head, and prayed for him again. Rora caught her lips moving along with the words and stopped them, clenching her jaw and praying instead that the people from the camp would fecking hurry up.
Finally they started walking forward, keeping their crossbows leveled. There were seven of ’em, which meant enough bolts for them to feel safe. They were walking so slow it made Rora want to scream, until they finally stopped and one of them called, “Where’s your wounded?” Rora tugged at the reins she held, and Scal’s horse plodded forward a few steps to stand even with her. Even far away as they were, she heard the low, angry hiss that rippled through the seven of them. “Northman,” one finally spat.
She should’ve expected it. She’d been so wrapped up just in finding anywhere that she hadn’t thought about how most Fiaterans would go out of their way to not help a Northman. The hate probably ran even deeper in the men trapped up in the North. Hells, Aro was right; it was probably Northmen who’d started their camp afire.
The crossbows were still aimed; Rora, because she was at the front with Joros, could see the one pointed right at her chest. “You’ll be leaving now,” one of the men said levelly.
With slow movements, to keep from spooking any of the men, Joros reached inside his cloak and brought out a drawstring bag. He tossed it so it landed between him and the bowman, hitting the ground with the heavy clink of coins. The man always seemed to have coinpurses ferreted away; Rora pushed that into her brain for the future, but there were other things to worry about now. “Shelter for one night,” Joros said, his voice steady and certain, like he knew you couldn’t argue with what he was saying. “We’ll tend to the Northman—he’s in no condition to cause any trouble.”
“Sure won’t be after he’s dead.”
Rora saw anger flash on Joros’s face, and she grimly kicked her feet out of the stirrups. He was about to do something stupid, which meant she was about to have to avoid a crossbow bolt. She flexed her fingers, trying to work some blood back into them so maybe she could throw one of her daggers if she had to.
“Do you have a priest here?” The merra pushed her way to the front of their group, her head held high. A fire had made a wreck of her face, but if they could look beyond the scars to notice her yellow robes, they’d know her for a priestess.
>
It took a while for any of them to find their voice back, to give a tentative, “Aye. We’ve a parro.”
“You will take us to him,” Vatri said, and there wasn’t any room for arguing in her voice. You’d have to be dumb to argue to a priest’s face in the first place, and this one’s face especially. They put on a show of resistance, shuffling their feet, suddenly none of ’em wanting to be in charge, but they eventually turned and marched back to their camp, and Rora and the others followed with the merra in the lead. Anddyr scrambled off Aro’s horse to retrieve the coinpurse for Joros, and then the witch-man trudged along next to them, slogging through the snow.
The fire was under control by the time they reached Aardanel, only a few small spots of flame that were almost ready to die even without the buckets of snow being thrown at them. One of the crossbowmen broke away, probably to report the situation to the others, and probably to ready everyone inside for the arrival of a Northman, too. Keeping her movements small, Rora slipped one of her daggers out of its slim sheath at her hip and snuck it up her sleeve, fingers rubbing at the broken blue stone in the hilt for comfort. The edges of the pommel stone were sharp, but it was a hard habit to break. She didn’t like her odds of taking on a whole convict camp with only a few knives, but she’d be damned if she wouldn’t be ready for it.
They were hard people, harder even than they’d been when they were sent here in the first place. You had to’ve got damned unlucky to become a convict—hells, Rora’d be judged a convict more’n a dozen times over if she ever got put before a magistrate—and for convicts, it was hanging or working. It seemed easier, to choose working. That meant living, after all. But looking at the faces of the convicts, the men and women with a cross cut into their left cheeks, some with chains strung between wrists and ankles—their eyes were deader’n hanged men’s.
The children were worse.
Back in the Canals, kids ate what they could steal or earn, and that usually wasn’t much. Pups—those kids who had enough skill to earn the protection of one of the packs—ate a bit better, but they still mostly got scraps. Here, you could tell there was no kind of protection, nothing to steal or earn. They had hollow eyes in hollow bodies, and each of ’em looked a step away from death.
It seemed like they had to walk through the whole camp to get to the priest, past every skinny face and all the people waiting like tinder for a spark to light them. But finally they got to the chapel, which looked just like every other building except for the sun and flame hanging above the door, and found the parro outside wringing his hands. He was small, almost swallowed by the thick furs he wore over his red cassock, and he looked like the nervous sort of man pickpockets learned to avoid, the kind that was always checking to make sure his coins were still there.
Vatri glared him into submission, and he quickly opened up the door to the chapel. It took all of them—no help from the convicts or the crossbowmen, of course—to drag Scal down off the horse and into the chapel, where it was a little warmer’n outside. There was a fire burning in a metal bowl at the center of the room, hardly big enough to give off any warmth, but it was better’n nothing. They laid Scal out near the fire, and still the parro hadn’t said a word, but he started praying pretty hastily as they unwrapped the layers of bloody cloth wound around Scal. “I need water,” Vatri told him, and the parro was happy enough to leave for a while.
The cloth stuck to him, the dried blood trying to use the fabric like extra skin, and when they finally peeled it back, there was fresh blood with all the dried. They cleaned away as much of it as they could, the parro muttering frantic prayers as the water he’d brought went from pink to red to brown. The big wound was starting to stitch itself up at the far edges, but it still gaped open in places. Scal had blood left in him, so that was good, but he’d already lost so much of it, which wasn’t good at all. Rora didn’t want to ask the merra if they were already too late. They should’ve stopped sooner, shouldn’t’ve let him bleed so much, should’ve done something different . . .
“We’ll need clean linen,” Vatri said grimly to the parro. “And brandy.” She paused as the priest left, and didn’t meet Rora’s eyes as she added, “I’ll need a knife.”
The blue-pommeled dagger was in her sleeve, and Rora didn’t need to be told what to do with it. There was a sick feeling in her stomach as she stuck the blade into the coals of the fire.
Vatri poured half the jug of brandy over the wound. Anddyr and Aro pushed down on Scal’s shoulders in case he woke up, and Rora gently pushed the edges of the wound as close together as she could. The merra prayed for what felt like too long over the knife before she pulled it from the coals, her hand wrapped with heavy cloth where she held the hilt.
Scal didn’t wake when Vatri pressed the blade against his flesh, which was a blessing. For as long as it took to draw one sharp breath, she held the dagger there. The stench of burned meat followed as she pulled the knife away and pressed it down again, higher up along the wound, the dagger’s tip crossing over the curled, blackened edges of the wound. Where the skin wasn’t burned shut, it turned a bright pink, like a piece of meat over a fire right before the fat started boiling. Aro stumbled out the door, hand clamped over his mouth. The parro was praying, his words mixing together in a blubbery fear.
Vatri had to reheat the dagger twice more to finish sealing the wound, and then she poured the rest of the brandy over the curving black line she’d made along Scal’s chest and stomach. Wordlessly she pointed at the bundle of cloth the parro had dropped, and then she walked out into the cold. Rora could hear the sound of retching.
Working together, she and Anddyr managed to get the linens wrapped around Scal, though it wasn’t easy. They cleaned away all the dried blood on him to make sure there wasn’t any fresh, but any other wounds he’d had were already stitching themselves together and didn’t look in need of much besides a gentle cleaning. Rora glanced around once, to see where Joros’d gone to, but there was no sign of him.
The parro was surprised to see the flamedisk on Scal’s bare chest, and Rora couldn’t blame him. She would’ve guessed a Northman would care about the Parents even less than she did. But the parro prayed extra hard over Scal after he saw the flamedisk, and it sounded almost like he might’ve even meant the words. Rora found a wall to put her back to and finally let her eyes close, because she’d done everything she could for the Northman, even if it was already too late for him.
CHAPTER TWO
It wasn’t truly dark, though to Keiro it felt darker than a night with no moon. There was no warmth in the smoldering red glow that filled the cavern, nothing to chase away the shadows that clung thick as blood. Once, so long ago now, Pelir had told him that the blinding granted the faithful a special kind of sight, a sight that was deeper than seeing. Keiro, with his one eye gone and the other that he’d been too afraid to take, had never been granted anything but the lack of depth perception. Perhaps one of the truly faithful, one who’d kept his hands steady and let the ice pierce both eyes—perhaps a man like that could have looked up and faced the baleful glow and seen deeper.
Keiro could not. He lay in a ball of fear, damp and shaking, the faded screams of Fratarro still echoing through his bones, setting his nerves aflame. It was quieter now, the screams turned to sobs turned to ragged breaths, and all rising and fading like the tide of the great wide sea, starting and stopping like the beating pattern of the world’s heart. Even the gentle murmurs were gone now, the comforting undertones replaced by an intermittent raw sound like bark scraping on bark. Flesh, burned black by fire so long ago, rubbing calming circles against burned flesh.
Keiro lay, and shook, and wept for his gods.
He had no idea how much time had passed since the screaming had begun, how long he had lain in this place so deep beneath the earth listening to his gods wake and sleep and wake again to blazing pain. The mravigi had fled the cavern at the first scream, leaving Keiro alone with the Twins. But there finally came a gentle touch on
his shoulder. He looked up into two eyes like embers, nested in the coals of a scaly black face. “It is time for you to go,” the creature said softly, sadly, its voice little more than a breath.
Keiro uncurled his body and on hands and knees followed after the creature, guided by the scrape of its forked tail against the floor. White scales glowed like stars among the black along its body, giving off the faintest light—enough, in the darkness, that Keiro could see the stark outlines of his hands against the ground. The mravigi had long been thought dead, burned up with their homeland by the righteous fire of the Parents. Yet they lived, against all hope, and they lived in great numbers. Here, they were called Starborn.
It was easier to think of the mravigi than to think of the Twins.
Keiro and the Starborn had almost left the chamber, the red glow of the gods’ gaze starting to fade, when a husky voice called after him. “Do not think we have forgotten you.”
Keiro had to turn then, and face them—the Twins, cast down by their Parents centuries ago and bound in this place for the rest of their immortal lives, sleeping and waking by the strokes of some unknowable clock. Sororra held her brother, cradling his ravaged body as he seemed to sleep. It was hard, still, to look at Fratarro. Keiro had seen drawings before, guesses at what poor Fratarro would look like with his limbs torn away, but even the most gruesome artists couldn’t have prepared Keiro for what he saw. Fratarro’s flesh was burned and blackened, his arms and legs little more than raw, ichorous stumps—save for the left arm, which was held in place by clumsy stitches. Worse, almost, was the wound in his chest, pierced by a black stone shard and seeping blood.
This—his punishment for daring to create something beautiful.
“We will not forget that you are the first to find us,” Sororra continued, her voice pinning him immobile to the floor. “We will call for you, when we have need.” She held him a moment longer, but finally she released him, looking back to her brother.
