by Rachel Dunne
They were, relatively speaking, a small price to pay for the score of fighters and the dozen skilled killers the woman charmingly called the Dogshead had promised him. Cripples had a tendency to die when confronted with anything more difficult than limping around, and children were easy enough to foist off if they proved less than useful. He didn’t think either would please the Dogshead too much, since she seemed to believe Joros could take them to a place where they’d be able to live out their miserable days in peace. True, she believed it because it was what he’d promised her, but really, people should stop taking him at his word. A man with a light coinpurse was apt to say anything to get what he needed.
There were so many threads to hold. He needed to get rid of the Scum who weren’t useful, but in a way that wouldn’t anger the ones who were useful; he needed to get all of them into Raturo, learn what they could about anything that had transpired while Joros had been gone, kill the Ventallo, and get back out. He also needed to assume even this plan would fail, since the majority had so far; he needed to be prepared for the ever-more-desperate plans that would follow, which largely involved keeping Rora and Aro both alive and on his side. For all his words to the merra, he had little idea how to weave those threads together into something that wouldn’t fray and fall apart. For all his bravado, he was leaning just as much on hope. He just wasn’t stupid enough to let anyone else know that.
Rora slept for much of the next day, and they had to shake her awake once shadows started creeping through the streets of Mercetta. Anddyr pronounced that she was healing well enough to travel, which was good, since she was going to be traveling regardless.
She spoke little, eyes wide and vacant as they bundled her out to the waiting horses. It was an expression more befitting her brother, and Joros was somewhat disappointed that a little torture was all it had taken to break her. He’d rather enjoyed having one other person around who could manage to rub two thoughts together. Still, he didn’t need her for her mind. She could sleep all she liked, drool on herself, rip her hair out and scream obscenities—so long as she lived.
“I’ll ride with her,” Aro said softly. He didn’t seem to be taking well to being the twin in charge.
His sister stirred when he tried to lift her up onto his horse. “We’re going to meet Whitedog, yeah?” she asked, her voice even rougher than usual.
“Yeah,” Aro said.
“I’ll ride on my own.” She moved as if she were wading through chest-high water, but she walked to her own horse and mounted by herself, after a few false starts. Joros gave her a small nod. He’d heard somewhere that a good leader acknowledged bravery. That had always felt to him like stupid triteness, but it didn’t hurt to welcome back a shade of the woman. Maybe there was more than the shade lurking behind the bags under her eyes.
They passed from East Quarter to West by way of North, where Joros had to bribe their way through. North Quarter was the nicest part of the blasted city, where all the richest merchants and nobles lived in the shadow of the ugly castle King Cordano hid inside. They didn’t pass anywhere near the royal residence, staying close to the city walls, and they finally passed into West Quarter as the pinks and purples were fading from the sky. West seemed to be rapidly sinking into the disreputability of South, the buildings in shambles and the people staring with as little welcome as those from North Quarter.
There were a handful of cloaked people lurking near the gate, just out of the circle of light cast by the guards’ lanterns. Aro held his hand up and rode toward them alone, Joros waiting with the others in front of a crack-faced building. Glancing back, he saw Rora looking after her brother with hard eyes.
Aro waved them forward after a few minutes of talking, and Joros led his little band to the gate. Wheels creaked behind him, two big carts full of children and cripples, pulled by the well-muscled sort of men the twins seemed to call “fists.” Others followed on foot, keeping close to the carts. The gate guards, looking bored, hardly spared any of them a glance. They passed beneath the stone wall in silence, Joros and his hired help and their human baggage.
The silence held even outside the walls, save for the squeaking of a loose wheel on one of the carts. For all the money he’d given them, Joros would have expected they’d equip themselves better. He was sure they’d spent most of it on foolish things—like the torches they lit once the light of the city was behind them. Stupid as it was, it saved Anddyr from having to make his floating lights, which likely would have just terrified the Scum anyway.
Aro was the first to break the silence; though he whispered, any sound carried on a quiet night. He was riding next to the first cart, his horse plodding slow to keep pace, and he spoke to a figure wrapped in layers of cloaks. “This is really all that’s left?”
Joros didn’t hear an answer, but Aro’s whisper came again—“I’m sorry”—before his horse moved ahead.
The boy kept moving through their little crowd, circling from person to person. He seemed to know most of them, and had a soft word even for the ones he didn’t know. His careful whispering, still loud amid the silence, was grating, but Joros supposed the boy could waste his time as he chose. Aro rode next to the particularly unfriendly woman who’d cut off Rora’s ear, and Joros heard him whisper, “Talk to her.” He rode up next to his sister, whispered, “Talk to her.” Still, no one else spoke, save Anddyr, whose incessant mumbling counted for less than nothing.
The road was as straight and logical as a drunkard’s path, and Joros might have insisted on a more direct route by cutting through the fields and forests if it wasn’t for the damned carts. The fists, for all their strength, were having enough trouble with the shallow ruts in the road. The squeaking wheel sounded as though it was like to fall apart without any more provocation. He’d intended to ride until a few hours after the sun showed its face, after they’d gotten a good distance from the city, but he was going to strangle someone if he had to listen to that wheel any more.
The lands they were riding through weren’t so very far from his family’s estate, though the place hardly deserved the title—a sad collection of old buildings ringed by a crumbling wall. If they kept going, they’d likely pass it in the night, the shadows hiding him from any eyes that might recognize a face that had been gone for over two decades. With the mood he was in, though, he wasn’t entirely sure he could be trusted not to snatch one of those torches and set the whole place afire. He called a halt, to put a stop to the horrid squeaking. He would spend the night sleeping and breathing—a brief flash of memory put a delicate hand on his chest, a gentle voice whispering for him to count his breaths, soft lips brushing his cheek, but he pushed that memory viciously aside. He’d vowed not to think of her, after all. He would sleep through the night without a care in his heart, and when they rode past his former home tomorrow, he would hold his head high and not look at it.
There was a half-collapsed barn a distance from the road, and it took longer than it should have to get the carts through the field. Joros was impressed by the strength of the fists at least; he was pleased with the new muscle he’d bought, even if they spent his coin on foolish things.
They sent the children out looking for things to burn, and when they had a decent pile built under the section of barn that wasn’t collapsed, Anddyr set a spark to it. In the sudden brightness, Joros saw most of the Scum make warding signs over their chests. The ignorant were always suspicious of things they couldn’t comprehend; Joros imagined these Scum spent a great deal of time wrapped in suspicion.
There were too many of them to gather around the one fire, so they started two smaller fires apart from the main one. Most of the Scum divided themselves between the new fires, but the apparent leaders gathered around the first with Joros and his companions. There was the one they called Dogshead, with whom he and Aro had negotiated this whole affair, a woman who carried her years heavily; there was the one who’d taken Rora’s ear, who didn’t look like she could manage a smile even with a knife to her throat; th
ere was a short man so packed with muscle he looked as wide as three normal men; a handful of others whose drawn faces spoke of hard lives and made them indistinguishable. Pieces of conversation drifted from the other fires, but around theirs, the silence held.
“A story?” one voice called out, hesitant and hopeful. “Haven’t heard a story in a long while.”
Joros wrinkled his nose—he’d always gone out of his way to avoid the storytelling tradition many of the Fallen seemed to embrace so eagerly—but there were excited murmurs from all the fires. The one who spoke first, though, surprised Joros.
“I’ve got a story,” Rora said, her voice rough from too little use and probably a bit of a fever. Still, it carried in the openness of the barn, and an eager hush fell. She didn’t look up from the fire, looking eerily like the burned merra with the flames carving dancing shadows on her face. “It’s about a bird, who lives in a big tree with all the other birds and has a pretty good life, so far as birds go. She’s got lots of bird friends, and a good bird family. She’s happy, right? But one night she wakes up and she sees a cat prowling around the tree, and it’s scrawny and hungry-looking and the bird just knows that cat would do anything to make a meal out of all her friends and all her family. There’s no time to think up any good plan, there isn’t even time to wake up the other birds. The bird’s so scared all she can think to do is fly off and hope the cat follows her instead, and hope she can lose the cat later on. And the bird hates herself for it, but it feels like the right thing, and she knows she’s kept the cat away from her bird family. And then she goes back to the big tree and finds out a different cat came while she was gone and ate up a bunch of the other birds, and the ones who’re left think she’s a coward for running from the cat, but they’re wrong about all of it.” Her eyes were still on the flames, and the silence stretched out behind her words.
From one of the other fires, a child muttered, “Kinda a shit story, innit?” and a laugh burst out of Joros.
“It was a fine story,” the Dogshead said reproachfully, glaring over her shoulder toward the child, then favoring Joros with her glare as well, and finally swinging it to the ear-cutter at her side. Joros nor the other two seemed particularly affected by the glare, and the latter was staring into the fire as intently as Rora. “Let’s have another, hey?”
The other stories told were little better than Rora’s, though mercifully just as short. The mood in the barn was too bleak for any kind of proper storytelling, and the fists were soon arguing about who would take first watch. It was easy enough to lose them all in slumber.
There was still a twitch in Joros’s eye when they rode out again, the sun on their shoulders. He’d had Anddyr magic up a fix for that damned wheel, and the silence was marvelous—it was the location that made him edgy. Slow as they were moving, still they were quickly approaching his family’s estate. Joros wanted both to flee and to destroy his old home, and complicated emotions were one of the things he hated most. All things should burn as pure as the fire of a good anger.
And then it was there, just off the twisting road, an overgrown lane leading to the rotted-out gate. No matter his resolution the previous night, he couldn’t help looking.
Truly, the place didn’t look much different than it had when Joros had left—yet it was, the walls slightly more crumbled, the buildings slightly more decrepit. It showed clear signs of having been ignored for a good stretch of time, and that drew Joros to a halt before the splinters of the gate. His father had never been particularly concerned with appearances, but he’d never been outright neglectful.
“Cappo?” Anddyr asked softly at his elbow.
Weeds sprouted between the cobbles beyond the gate, and a stubborn tree had even begun to push its way up through the stones. The roof of the stable was completely collapsed, patches of rotting thatch clinging to the edges of the supports. The door to the main house hung off one hinge, and more than one of the windows were shattered. “They’re gone,” Joros said in amazement, though he didn’t mean to say the words aloud. It was a relief and a disappointment both.
Joros turned his horse around to face the two carts full of staring faces, all the others scattered at the sides of the cart. He swept one arm toward the broken gate. “Your new home,” he said. “As promised.” The satisfaction of threads twining together was small, but it wasn’t nothing.
The children swarmed over the sides of the cart and raced through the gate, scattering, small voices shouting out snippets of wonder. The fists and the knives and the various others went more slowly, but there was just as much curiosity in their faces. Only the Dogshead remained, and her sour-faced second.
“A nice place you’ve found for us,” the ear-cutter sneered.
The Dogshead fixed him with a critical eye. “There won’t be any angry landowners coming to turn us out, will there?”
Joros shook his head. “It’s mine,” he said, because there was no one to tell him it wasn’t.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The act of lighting a fire on the hills felt wrong—and even more wrong was that it would be one of the Ventallo to suggest it. Saval Tredeiro must have read the hesitation in Keiro’s face, for he waved a dismissive hand. “It’s been a long journey, brother, and I’m tired and hungry. Allow me this one little blasphemy, won’t you?” He’d winked at Keiro as though they were conspirators—and they truly were, Keiro supposed, since he stood by and let Saval’s attendants light the fire built of twigs and grass stalks. After a moment’s hesitation, Keiro showed them how to bundle and tie the stalks together to burn slower and longer than the sparse handfuls of grass.
Keiro could feel Saval’s eyes on him, and tried to keep his face toward the ground, to keep the fire’s shadows on the left side of his face as he wound together grass stalks. “Have you been here a while, then?” Saval asked.
“A few months,” Keiro said.
Saval whistled in surprise, or perhaps appreciation. “That’s quite a while to live in desolation. What’s kept you here, brother?” His words were light, but there was a shrewdness in them.
Keiro shrugged with a casualness he didn’t feel. There was still the impulse in him to sing out the news of the Twins, but there was another sense, an instinct perhaps awoken by Yaket’s story, that urged him to caution. The certainty in him was quiet, faded. “I have found an unexpected home here. The plainswalkers live quiet lives, and I’ve found that to be what I need most.”
Saval snorted. “Insect-eaters. Yes, I imagine they’re quite simple.”
Keiro’s hands tightened briefly around the grass stalks, crinkling them between his fingers, and there was a strange, cold feeling in his stomach. “They’re good people,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sure they are,” Saval said, waving a dismissive hand. “Much as I may not understand it, I can’t fault a man for seeking simple pleasures with savages. But tell me—” and he leaned in, close to the fire, as though they were conspirators “—do these savages have any interesting secrets to tell?”
Keiro kept his hands moving, his eye down. Among the Fallen, the Ventallo were law itself, presumed embodiments of the gods’ wills. A Ventallo was obeyed without question, and given complete honesty. Yet, Keiro found himself wondering if these unspoken laws still applied to an apostate such as himself. “Nothing of note,” he said. The lie burned a little on its way out, but not much more than would have a lie about the food he’d eaten yesterday. Keiro had been a long time gone from the Fallen, his life grown distant from the rigid strictures that told him to hear the Ventallo as though they were the Twins. Keiro had heard the Twins, and Saval Tredeiro sounded nothing like them.
“Tell me anyway. Time has a way of twisting things. Even small matters may have great import.”
If Saval wished to hear of savages, Keiro would tell him of savages. “They hunt birds. They weave grass. They like listening to the old stories. As I said, they’re simple folk.” The last came out harder than he had meant it to, but Saval took no notice. Still, K
eiro tried to turn the direction of the conversation before the Ventallo noticed his banked anger. “You said you think a piece of Fratarro lies here?”
Leaning back, Saval said, “I did say that. I’d hoped a brother found in distant places might be more help in finding it.”
“Why would you think to find Fratarro here?” Keiro asked, ignoring the jibe. “There’s nothing here.”
“Where better to hide something? ‘To the far horizons,’ we say, and if the world doesn’t end here, well, then I’ll eat one of those foul-looking birds too stupid to live anywhere else.” One of Saval’s attendants chuckled at that, and they shared smirks.
Keiro stared at Saval. There was that certainty in his mind again, the whispering. He should tell this man, tell all the world, sing the joys of the Twins loud and free. The certainty almost drowned his caution; the truth almost came spilling from his lips. If it hadn’t been Saval Tredeiro, if a different Ventallo had found him, Keiro might not have swallowed the words. “I do not think you will find a piece of Fratarro here,” he said instead, and the words were not a lie—but so very close to one. He didn’t think the mravigi would show Saval into their tunnels, and even if they did, Fratarro was Fratarro and not a piece of himself.
“No?” Saval asked with one raised eyebrow, and Keiro was sure he would have said more, but he was stopped by a dark shape moving through the grass, one of his attendants yelping in surprise.
