“He’ll be back to his charitable pursuits soon,” I said. “But it wasn’t my doing.”
Deanyn shrugged. “The less you did for him, the more I like you, Scriber.”
“Damn right!” Orya slapped her palm belligerently against the stone she sat on. “If there’s any luck, the next whore he gives it to’ll have the pox.”
The other women were nodding, and some voiced their agreement. Even soft-voiced Genna looked angry—I could finally see in her the woman I had watched fight with such savagery the night before.
“That’s enough.” Tenille had tamed her expression, and now her face was stern. The insults died down immediately. “The Captain will be… pleased to hear that her cousin is well.”
“Where is Captain Bryndine?” I asked. “I need to speak with her.”
At that, Sylla finally spoke. “She doesn’t want to be disturbed, Scriber.”
“She will want to know about her cousin,” Genna said.
“She said she wanted to be alone,” Sylla growled. “She certainly won’t want to see him. I’ll tell her.”
“Tell her what, Syl?” Deanyn asked. “The Scriber was there, he knows the man’s condition. You’re upset that she didn’t let you come with her is all. You can’t stand guard over her every moment of the day.”
The argument seemed to get through to her—or else she simply realized she was outnumbered—and Sylla lapsed back into silence with an angry snort.
“You’ll find her on the hill there.” Tenille pointed into the darkness to the east of the camp, where a low rise was visible, silhouetted against the night sky. “She’s with Janelyn.” I did not know the name, but the sadness in her voice answered any questions I had.
“Janelyn is the girl who…” I trailed off, unable to come up with a tactful way to finish the question.
Tenille took my meaning and nodded. “She died a few hours ago. We built her a pyre on the hill, but the Captain wanted some time alone before we send her to the Father.” She looked up at the crest of the small hill. “It has been long enough, I think. We’ll go to her together.” She raised her voice to catch the attention of the company. “On your feet, women. It’s time.”
* * *
I did not speak to Bryndine until after the ceremony was done. Instead, I stayed and watched. It was sacrilege to burn a woman—the Children taught that women were to be buried, returned to the Mother in the Earth, while men were burned in order to free the spirit to rise to the Father. But I did not protest. Janelyn had died of battle wounds, and the Father was the patron of warriors. The girl had earned a warrior’s rest.
It was a simple rite. Few words were said. Bryndine commended Janelyn’s soul to the Father and set the pyre aflame, and the gathered women all saluted in unison, then stood a silent vigil as the body burned. Through the flames I could see the girl’s face. She was young, barely twenty years old, and her hair was cut in a short, boyish style clearly modeled after her Captain’s. I wondered why these women were so devoted to Bryndine. This girl, at least, had died because of her.
It was a long while before the body burned away, but eventually little was left of the pyre or the girl but smoke and ash. As the women began to slowly file back to camp, I pulled Tenille aside.
“Tenille, did you tell Bryndine about me?” I needed to know before I spoke to Bryndine myself.
She shook her head. “You know Dennon, not every Scriber hates you for the Old Garden. You couldn’t have known that wall would collapse.”
“Maybe not every Scriber. But most. They don’t forget—it says so on the pin. Did you tell her?”
Tenille smiled slightly. “You have a point. No, I didn’t tell her. I didn’t have to. Did you really think the King’s niece wouldn’t have heard of you?”
“I had hoped.” So Bryndine had known me when we first met. Another thing she’d hidden from me. “How do you work with that woman, Tenille? Do you know she was in Waymark the day before the attack and didn’t say anything? She knew it was coming!” I gestured to the guttering remains of the pyre. “That girl would still be alive if she’d warned us!” I was speaking too loudly, I knew—several nearby women turned towards us curiously.
Tenille’s smile faded, and her face went cold. Gripping me tightly by the arm, she dragged me away from the others. “You are twice the fool everyone thinks you are, do you know that?” she hissed. “Those women will break your legs if they hear that talk about Bryndine, and I’ll let them! You don’t have the first idea what really happened.”
“She told me she was scouting—”
“We were scouting. We are allowed to do little else. Ord told us the plan was to take the Burners by surprise before they attacked at all. We spread out across the area trying to find where they planned to strike. The Captain had to keep quiet because we didn’t want them to catch word of the ambush.
“But the High Commander lied to us. His plan was always to let the Burners attack once we found their target—to get them all in one place. Then they could be surrounded and captured; they couldn’t disappear again, like they always do. Ord didn’t want us telling the villagers because he needed you there as bait.” She spat the last word through gritted teeth. “When the Captain found out, she tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t listen—he wanted to be the man who caught the uncatchable Burners. So she disobeyed his orders, and brought us to warn you.”
“She should have warned us to begin with,” I insisted stubbornly. “I don’t care what the plan was; she put us all at risk.” Tenille’s story might have lessened Bryndine’s culpability in the attack on Waymark, but it did not entirely clean her hands.
“Dennon, Ord was furious. After the battle, while he was still lucid, he blamed her for letting the Burners escape again. He is going to tell the King. Bryndine has fought to be recognized as a soldier her whole life, and they’re going to take it away. From her, from all of us. For saving you and the rest of those… ingrates.” Tenille gestured towards the main camp, where the villagers of Waymark mingled with the First Company. “Think about that before you run your mouth off again.”
Releasing my arm, she turned back towards the camp. “She still needs to know that Ord will live,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away. “And you might consider thanking her.”
I was left alone on the dark hill. The women had returned to camp by then, taking torches and lanterns with them, and the only light remaining came from the stars and the dying embers of Janelyn’s pyre. In that dim light, I could see the huge, solitary shadow of Bryndine Errynson, still standing alone by the remains of the fire. I didn’t know what I wanted to say to her now, not after what Tenille had told me, but despite that, I found myself approaching her.
“Scriber Dennon,” she said without turning away from the ashes. “What news of my cousin?”
“He lives.” I had promised Ord that I would not tell her of his memory loss, but Tenille’s story had not left me sympathetic towards the High Commander. “But I am concerned about his mind. He could not remember why we were here, or who his officers were; not even your name.”
“Do you think he will recover?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded slowly. “He meant to have the King strip me of my rank, before he lost his senses. I suppose his men will remind him.”
“Why did you not tell me what he had done? Why let me blame you?”
“He is the High Commander of the King’s Army. The people must have faith in him if we hope to maintain Erryn’s Promise.”
“You could tell the King what he planned. Counter his complaint with your own.”
“My uncle will not take my side against Uran, Scriber Dennon. I imagine he already knew of the plan.”
“You still should have warned us, whatever your orders. It might have saved lives.”
“Yes. I know.” She never moved her eyes from the fire, or let so much as a hint of emotion color her voice.
I wanted to grab her and shake her, to pr
ovoke some kind of reaction. Instead, I changed the subject. “A woman from Waymark blames you for her husband’s death,” I told her. “Josia Kellen. She is not in her right mind. She may try something.”
“The innkeeper? I thought she had been burned in the fire. Did you treat her?”
“No, I just spoke with her. She had no injuries I could see.” A shiver went through me—there was another kind of burning, one that left no mark.
“She was trying to put the fire out at the inn during the battle when she collapsed, screaming. Some of my women heard her say she had been burned.”
I rubbed my temple with two fingers. “She… It must have been the stress. I fainted myself.” Josia could not have suffered the same hallucination I did—it made no sense. But the fear did not leave me. She could not have heard the voices, but if she had, what did it mean? I didn’t want to consider the possibility. “More importantly, if she does something foolish… be gentle with her. She lost more than most last night.”
“I will not harm her, Scriber.”
“There is one more thing.” I steeled myself to ask the question I had been avoiding. “You know who I am. Why did you hide it?”
She did turn to look at me then. “I suspected. I knew the name Dennon Lark. But I saw no reason to bring it up. You clearly wished to avoid recognition.”
“But why trust me to help you, or treat your cousin? You know my reputation.”
“That you were responsible for the collapse at the Old Garden while searching for the Archives? A tragedy, certainly, but it has little bearing on your training. When they tell stories of you, most forget to mention that before the accident you were quite the prodigy among the Scribers.”
Her level tone set me off my guard. With Bryndine, I could never tell where I stood—her face and voice betrayed nothing of what she felt. Most people, when they found out who I was, reacted with anger that I had dared to defile holy ground, or that I had led men to their death; they found something in the rumors to hate me for. I knew how to cope with that kind of scorn—by retreating. I had done so for five years. But this, I did not know how to take.
“I’m responsible for more than that,” I said. “There was nothing there, just an empty chamber, another piece of the Underground. I defiled holy ground. I destroyed a priceless work of art that we have lost the means to recreate. I desecrated a piece of history. That is a violation of every oath a Scriber swears!” I had tried to hide my past for too long; I could not accept that it mattered so little to her. I wanted to explain to her the wrong I had done, to make her understand, to make her hate me. I was comfortable with being hated. “And I did it for a tall tale. A children’s song! People died for nothing, and I’m responsible for it!”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen.” Her expression remained inscrutable. It was too much for me to take.
“Don’t do that!” Five years worth of anger exploded out of my mouth. “Don’t you dare say that, like it was nothing. Damn it to the Dragon, what does it take to make you care? What is wrong with you? Raise your voice, scowl, something; don’t just stand there!”
“Would it make things any different? What’s done is done.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you could watch that girl burn without even a frown?”
She did not frown then, either, but her voice was cold. “I do not have to explain myself to you, Scriber Dennon.”
I almost struck her. She was well over a foot taller than me, almost twice as broad in the shoulders, and as strong in one finger as I was in both arms, no doubt. But I almost struck her. I was angrier than I had ever been—and worse, I barely understood why. The only thing that stopped me from attacking her was a low, quiet noise. A whisper.
“All will burn.”
The rage that always came with the whispers struck me in the chest like a hammer, but rather than making me go through with the attack, it stopped me. Was the anger I felt even my own? Was I about to attack the King’s niece because of a voice in my head? Mother below, I’m truly losing my mind, I thought, fighting to control the fury being thrust upon me.
“Scriber, did you hear something?” Bryndine was instantly alert, peering into the darkness.
“You heard it?” I was pleased and terrified in equal parts. If she heard the whispers too, perhaps I was not mad—though if it was not madness, I did not know what else it could be. But then I realized she did not mean the voice. There was another sound, footsteps on the grass. I turned towards the noise, scanning the hillside with Bryndine.
There was a glint of light in the dark; starlight on metal. Staring in the direction it had come from, I saw a figure in the shadows, climbing the hill towards us.
“You shouldn’t have killed my Hareld.” Josia Kellen’s voice crept up the slope, thin and sad. I could see her now; somehow she had laid hands on a sword, and she pointed it at Bryndine accusingly. “You shouldn’t have killed him.” It should have been ridiculous, that small motherly figure waving a sword at a woman twice her size. But the look on her face, the way the shadows hugged the creases and wrinkles in her skin—she could have been a creature from legend, a spirit in the dark.
Bryndine stepped in front of me. “Drop your sword,” she commanded, though she had no weapon of her own; she had not brought her sword to the rite.
Josia lunged, thrusting the tip of the sword forward like a spear. Terror and instinct took hold of me, and I leapt backwards. But Bryndine didn’t flinch. With speed that would have been surprising had I not already seen her fight in Waymark, she sidestepped the thrust and brought a hand down hard on Josia’s forearm. With a cry of pain, Josia dropped the sword; Bryndine caught it before it hit the ground and levelled it at the other woman’s throat.
“Don’t hurt her!” I called, running to Bryndine’s side. She did not lower the blade.
“I will not. But what are we to do with her? She is clearly not well.”
I had no answer. “Josia, please, you have to tell her you won’t do this again.”
“They said I had to,” Josia sobbed, dropping to her knees. “They said I had to get revenge. They’ll burn me if I don’t!”
I gaped at her open-mouthed. She had to be speaking of the same voices I heard. What else could she mean?
“Who told you that? The Burners?” Bryndine asked.
“No, no, I can’t…” With sudden, appalling force, she hammered a fist into the side of her head. “They’re here! Don’t ask about them! They’re going to—”
Faintly, as though from far away, I heard voices whispering: “Burn.”
Josia screamed. And kept screaming. She collapsed on the ground, writhing and rolling as though trying to smother invisible flames. I heard cries of alarm coming from soldiers in the camp as the shrieking rolled down the hillside.
“What is this, Scriber?” Bryndine lowered her sword, looking to me for some explanation.
I knew what it was. I had felt it myself, not long ago. But there was no way to explain it. Or more accurately, there was no way to explain it that did not end with me looking as mad as Josia.
“It burns!” Josia arched her back against the grassy hillside and, with a final heartwrenching wail, went still. I crouched by her side, hoping she had only fainted from the pain. But she was not breathing.
Bryndine knelt down beside me. “Scriber Dennon? Is she…”
“She’s gone.”
People were running up the hillside now, and soon we were surrounded in soldiers demanding to know what had happened. By the light of their torches I noticed something I had not before: about halfway down the slope, an ancient fireleaf grew amidst the scattered trees that speckled the hill. It was surrounded in fallen leaves.
As they took Josia’s body away, Bryndine tried to explain what had transpired as best she could. But I stayed silent. I was preoccupied with one thought:
Josia had heard the same voices I did. And they had killed her.
Chapter Eight
The voi
ces plague me through every waking hour, and even in my sleep I cannot escape them. I dreamed of the Burnt again last night. I fear I may be losing my mind.
— From the personal journals of Dennon Lark
The following days of the journey to Three Rivers were not pleasant for me. Word spread about Josia’s death, and rumors naturally followed. The predominant story was that Josia had confronted Bryndine about the blasphemous funeral pyre, and Bryndine had killed her for it. As a result, Bryndine and her company were shunned and avoided—but that had been true before the incident, so little changed for them. Unfortunately, it was also common knowledge that I had been with the women when Janelyn was burned, and that I had witnessed Josia’s final moments.
Overnight, my status among the villagers shifted from hero to pariah. Ordinarily, this would have been acceptable, even desirable—I had not wanted their praise or their company to begin with. Josia had been the only one of them I could tolerate. But after my argument with Bryndine, I did not feel terribly welcome among her company either, and the soldiers of the First had no use for me at all now that Uran Ord was well again.
I have always been a man who enjoys solitude, but there was little opportunity for me to study or write on the long march to Three Rivers. Without my books, or any significant interaction with the others, there was nothing to distract my mind from the questions that plagued me: Had Josia truly heard the same voices I did? And if so, would I share her fate?
With death and madness at the forefront of my thoughts, I began to notice the fireleaf trees scattered around the countryside. They were not uncommon by any means, and their bright flame-red foliage made them easy to spot, even amidst all the other trees whose leaves were tinted red by autumn’s brush. Sometimes when we passed one growing close enough to the road, I thought I could hear the voices again, whispering their terrible words for my ears alone—but whether the sound was real or remembered, I could not say.
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