by Barb Hendee
Erath entered, bearing a wooden tray with another small loaf of dark bread. There were also two more steaming clay mugs and a small dome of plain fired clay covering something on a matching small plate.
Mari eyed the bread most of all.
At a soft crackle echoing in the near-empty common house, she looked toward the fireplace.
Tris was sifting through the piled firewood for small pieces to place on the growing flames.
Erath approached the long table nearest the door rather than step all the way in. For a moment, she watched him at the fire, and worry—or just fear—kept away her slight smile of the night before. Glancing at Mari, she silently mouthed, Can he help us?
Mari stiffened, and her thoughts went blank. What a twist, that someone should ask her that about him!
Erath stood waiting and watching.
Tris ignored them both. Mari’s own people had thrown or driven her out every time she’d tried to join with them, or done so once they learned she was the sole survivor of that cursed night in the Wicker Woods. Word of such things traveled quickly among a traveling people. Anyone who’d somehow lived—unmarked—through something like that was suspect, a threat, perhaps cursed.
Like a disease that might spread among them.
If these villagers learned the same about her, she’d fare even worse among them as an outsider, what some called a Tzigan—“vagabond thief”—and more so if they knew she was yai-morchi—“two-fleshed”—or what their kind called a “shifter.”
She looked back to Erath, still waiting for an answer. The elder woman’s eyes began to glisten; maybe tears were coming next.
“Yes,” Mari whispered without thinking about it.
“Yes to what?”
This question from Tris caught her off guard.
He had risen and was now fixed on her. He glanced once toward Erath, though Mari quickly cut in with her answer.
“She wants to know if you can really help them.”
A frown spread over his face. “Do not make promises for me. You are my translator now, and that is all.”
Mari heated up, but she swallowed down a retort for now. She noticed Erath’s worried attention shifting rapidly between her and him.
“I brought tea and some goat cheese,” Erath offered, and then began digging into pockets somewhere beneath her cloak. “And one each of these.”
She set two brown eggs on the table, likely boiled, as she stuttered out, “I’m . . . sorry if . . . if I caused a problem.”
“Don’t apologize about him,” Mari countered in Belaskian, which he wouldn’t understand. Her ire was aimed in his direction, and she quickly added, “You’re not the one who’s a problem.”
This appeared to just increase Erath’s worry.
Mari approached the far table across from Erath and looked on everything that had been brought for him without even being asked for. She took a slow breath, raised only her eyes to Erath.
“Thank you,” she said lowly. “Maybe you should go now.”
Erath took a quick look at Tris. “The zupan wants to know . . . what the Dead’s Man will do.”
Even Mari wanted to know that, and she translated the question into Stravinan for him.
“First, I need to see the body,” Tris answered. “They must dig her up.”
“What?” Mari asked, aghast.
“Tell her.” He nodded toward Erath.
Mari hesitated at such desecration but finally passed on his instruction. Erath swallowed hard. She nodded understanding just once, and Mari waved her off. Erath quickly left, and the instant the front door clunked shut, Mari turned back to Tris.
“What are you doing here?”
“What I was called to do,” he answered. “Put the dead that will not rest . . . to rest.”
“How? Isn’t that what you did last night, tearing that girl’s spirit apart?”
He looked away, as if this shamed him. “No, I told you that I had not . . . I was only protecting you.”
That was worse. The last thing she wanted was a life debt to someone she’d hunted for half of her cursed life.
“How?” she went on. “You touched it, so why didn’t you die, or even be hurt?”
He let out a slow exhalation and closed his eyes. “That is not how it works, not precisely.”
“I don’t know of anyone who can do what you did. So how?”
Whether it was anger, pain, or frustration, she didn’t know as he snapped at her.
“Because I am like the dead in being born dead!”
Confusion shut her up as much as anything else. She didn’t know what that meant or if she wanted to know. He made to step past her toward the still-warm food, which he’d seemed to expect and for which he hadn’t offered a word of thanks. Worse, a few moments ago, he’d treated her as if she were there merely to serve as his translator.
She grabbed his arm.
“Play the noble with peasants if you like,” she warned, “but don’t try it with me! I’m not your servant, and you couldn’t pay me enough, and you haven’t paid me anything as yet.”
He stared down at her, as he was nearly a head taller. Then he dropped his gaze, averted his face in something like shame, and did something that confused her all the more.
“I am sorry,” he whispered. “I apologize.”
Mari drew back in suspicion. He pulled out of her loosened grip, stepped to the table, and picked up only a mug of tea. She was still watching as he turned away without touching any of the food.
Dropping onto the nearer bench, she grabbed for an egg.
—
By late morning, Mari stood quietly in the village graveyard, set off in the nearby woods. She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, back and forth, as several men pulled a shrouded corpse from the ground after digging it up.
Zupan Alexandre stood nearby in silence. He frowned in disapproval, though he hadn’t refused the request of the Dead’s Man. It was unsettling how these people did anything he asked. She’d seen their kind’s quiet desperation before, but tampering with the dead was a bad idea, no matter what.
As the men set the body on the ground and stepped away, Tris didn’t hesitate. He stepped in and knelt down, as if unaffected, and pulled—or peeled—the shroud from the corpse.
“Brianne,” Alexandre whispered, staring as if he couldn’t look away if he wanted to. “She was a lovely girl.”
She wasn’t lovely now.
Mari didn’t look away either, but only because she saw it was the same girl from the loft last night. Time in a damp, muddy grave couldn’t hide that.
But she could be seen in color now. Her hair was a rich shade of red-blond and her dress was forest green. She looked starved to death, pale and sallow skin stretched over bones, though her lips were slightly darkened somehow.
Tris began searching the body. He pulled open the dress’s collar, dug into the bodice, rolled up sleeves, and lifted the skirt. He pulled off her slippers to check her toes for something.
Sitting back, he stalled for a moment.
“What is he doing?” Alexandre asked in a low whisper.
Mari didn’t know or even know what to lie.
Tris then moved up and started on the girl’s hair, combing it through his fingers, pulling apart the lashing that held some of it back in a tail.
Alexandre’s fast breaths became audible and grating, though Mari had heard them clearly from the moment they’d arrived. He took only one step toward Tris, obviously hesitant to interfere, even at this desecration.
But then Tris sat back on his knees again, still and silent for a moment. “Ask the zupan if she wore any jewelry, some gift that meant something to her.”
Mari blinked, startled, for she’d been staring at the body again. When she realized that question was for her, he’d turned
to look at her. She repeated the question to the zupan.
Alexandre couldn’t speak and only shook his head.
“No . . . or nothing he knows about,” she answered for him.
Tris turned back, leaned forward again, and peered at the girl’s head or face. He reached out and turned her head, or rather press-push-twisted it toward himself.
The faces of the men around the open grave darkened.
Two men with shovels gripped the handles so tightly their knuckles whitened.
Alexandre took another angry step forward.
“Tris . . . ?” Mari said uncertainly.
He ignored her and leaned even closer to the body’s head. Examining the hair on the far side, he pulled up a lock between his fingers.
“It has been cut here,” he said, “near the left side of her face.”
Alexandre wouldn’t understand those words, but he looked down at Tris’s hand.
“He says her hair’s been cut, one side only,” Mari translated.
“Ask him why and by whom,” Tris said, “and if it was done before or after death.”
Mari couldn’t see that it mattered but translated the questions. Alexandre shook his head.
“He doesn’t know,” Mari passed on.
“Did they hold a wake?” Tris asked, still fingering that lock of severed hair. “Did they lay the girl out for people to pay last respects, perhaps privately?”
When Mari asked, Alexandre confirmed this.
“Who knew her best?” Tris asked. “Who spent the most time alone with her in mourning?”
Mari balked. This was becoming ghoulish.
“Ask him,” Tris ordered.
Mari clenched her jaw, but she put the questions to Alexandre, word for word.
The zupan’s brow furrowed. He seemed lost in confusion and then some deep thought. Looking aside at Mari, he hesitated for two more breaths.
“Her mother, Cecilia,” he began. “Her sweetheart, Leif, and her close friend, Gena. Those spent more time than others in farewells.” He looked back to Tris, and his face darkened again. “Why?”
While translating the names and relationships quickly, Mari stepped closer behind Tris, halfway between him and the zupan, a foolish, dangerous act.
“Why?” she echoed to Tris.
“Because I need to speak to those he mentioned.”
She had no idea what he was after. So far, none of it was useful to her own purpose and likely put her in as much danger as him. Still, he was in charge here, and she had to let him continue.
“Which one first?” she asked.
He glanced down at the cut locks of hair, the section missing about a finger’s length compared with the rest.
“The most removed by blood or love, but the most likely confidante,” he answered. “The friend, Gena.”
—
It didn’t surprise Mari when the zupan insisted on being present while the Dead’s Man spoke with any of his people. She’d have done the same in his place.
She found herself inside a small home facing a frightened young woman about sixteen or seventeen seated in a chair. Alexandre sent the rest of Gena’s family outside, but he remained.
Gena was pleasant enough to look at, perhaps a little plain-faced. Stocky, with a full head of black curls, some escaping a knot at the back of her neck, she stared at Tris in open fright. He appeared to realize this—was perhaps accustomed to it—and dropped his head, stepping near and whispering next to Mari’s ear, too close for her comfort.
“I want you to handle the questioning. It will be less difficult for her versus you pausing to translate each answer. But remember the answers, word for word. I need to know the depth of the friendship and why Brianne went to Soladran.” He paused. “Can you tell when someone is lying?”
Mari thought on that. “Yes.”
He nodded once and stepped back. Then she felt somewhat at a loss. Directly questioning a frightened, grieving girl wasn’t one of her skills—nor a part of the bargain with him.
On impulse, she picked up a nearby stool, slid in next to Gena, and sat down with a cock of her head toward him.
“He just needs to know a few things,” she said to the girl. “Nothing to worry about, but he doesn’t speak your tongue very well.”
Gena looked from her to the zupan.
Alexandre nodded to the frightened girl. “You tell Miss Mari anything she wants to know.”
Miss Mari.
Gena wrung her hands in her lap.
“You and Brianne were good friends?” Mari began.
Gena nodded slightly and then answered, hoarsely at first.
“Best friends. She was the prettiest of us, all the girls here. Everyone loved Brianne, for she was kind too. I was lucky to be her friend.” Her lower lip quivered. “I still can’t believe she’s . . . I want her back.”
Mari kept her eyes on the girl, though she caught half of Tris’s face off to her right. He was watching and listening intently. Perhaps he couldn’t follow all that the girl said, but there was no mistaking the intensity in Gena’s voice.
“Have you seen her ghost?” Mari asked suddenly.
Gena shuddered and cringed away, and her gaze turned to the zupan. The answer was obvious, but Mari couldn’t let Alexandre interrupt.
“How many times?” she asked.
Gena’s breath caught as she looked back, and Mari waited.
“Twice,” the girl whispered.
“Did she try to touch or hurt you?”
“No! Brianne wouldn’t . . . she’d never hurt anyone. She just wants to go back to Cameron, that’s all!”
Alexandre lunged one step in toward the girl, and Mari tensed, ready to act.
“Cameron?” the zupan asked. “Guardsman Bródy?”
Gena clamped a hand over her mouth.
Mari studied both of them in confusion.
“Is that why she went to Soladran?” Alexandre demanded. “To see him?”
“Who’s Cameron?” Mari broke in, looking to Alexandre.
The zupan loomed over Gena in open anger and anguish, and Mari again worried what she’d been dragged into.
“A guard garrisoned at Soladran,” Alexandre answered. “He comes through on patrol twice a season.”
At Gena’s whimpers, tears now falling, Mari rose and stepped between the girl and the zupan. Tris inched in on her right, but she shot him a sharp glance, and he halted. Fixing again on the zupan, she waited. If he tried to step around and get to the half-wit girl . . .
Instead, he turned his ire on Mari.
“Cameron’s a ‘pretty boy’!” Alexandre nearly spit. “He likes to make the girls swoon, though I didn’t know he toyed with our Brianne. She was betrothed to Leif!” Again, he glared at the sobbing Gena. “You knew and said nothing?”
“He’s not like that,” Gena whispered, “and she loved him, hoped he would come back with her. He hates being a guard. He told her so, but she came back . . . alone . . . so sick . . .” Leaning forward, she began to weep. “At least, I still see her sometimes.”
Mari turned to the girl. “As a spirit? You like seeing that?”
Gena continued weeping, hiding her face.
Tris stepped closer. “Ask her if she cut Brianne’s hair.”
Mari eyed him once and then asked the question.
Gena lifted her face from her hands and stared in confusion. “Cut her hair? No, I would never. She was proud of it.”
Mari echoed this to Tris; without a word, he turned for the door.
“Come with me,” he said as he pulled the door wide. “Give me any other details on the way. I need to speak with the dead girl’s betrothed, so ask the zupan to lead the way.”
He was out the door before Mari overcame his abrupt exit and rushed after him.
�
��
After following Alexandre to another village dwelling, Mari found herself standing in front of its large attached stable with the front doors opened wide.
“Why here?” she asked, taking one step through the opening.
Tris stopped in the doorway. “Because Leif and his family probably own this stable. It is morning, so time to clean out stalls, usually the task of sons and other family children.”
Inside the dim stable, a large chestnut horse tied to the wall suddenly swung its head toward them. Its nostrils flared and its eyes widened, and it whinnied loudly in pulling against its bridle tether. When it couldn’t get free, it swung its rump around deeper into the stable and blew air out its nostrils.
Mari backstepped as a young man rushed out of the black shadows of another stall.
“Whoa, Heta!” he called, grabbing the horse’s rope. “Easy.”
Mari kept backing and almost bumped into Tris. He didn’t look at her—only at the young man or the horse—and then turned out of the stable to walk quickly away.
“Tell the zupan to bring Leif outside,” he said without looking back.
Mari remembered something he’d said in passing: Horses don’t like me.
She cocked her head toward Tris as she told Alexandre, “He wants Leif outside to talk.” Without waiting for the zupan’s answer, she followed Tris. So far, everyone here did whatever the Dead’s Man asked, whether they wanted to or not.
Tris now stood next to another dwelling at the far side of a wide, half-mud, half-dirt path through the village. She’d barely joined him and turned when she saw Alexandre emerge from the stable with the young man following behind.
Mari studied the latter.
He wasn’t quite what she’d expected. Tall and slender, nearly gangly, he had a pinched, long face that was pockmarked, but only on one side. He walked with a slight limp on the other side.
And he was the betrothed of the dead girl?
When the limping youth approached, he looked straight at Tris without a trace of fear.
Mari’s estimation of him rose.
“What do you want?” Leif asked Tris.
Mari stepped between them. “He’ll need to speak through me.”
