by J M D Reid
“You, too.” Avena swallowed. “Have the eldest bar your door tonight.”
“It’s a hospital!”
“Bar it.” Avena’s heart tightened. “Something that shouldn’t be is slinking through the night.”
“A monster? Is it a darkling?”
Avena couldn’t find the words to speak what she’d seen. Not to her friend. “Just . . . ask her to consider it.”
“Avena, child, we must depart. It is well past sunset. It will be approaching midnight by the time we return. I have sick to care for and need my lab.”
“I’ll be safe,” Avena promised and broke away from her friend. She hurried across the loading yard. Miguil, sitting in the driver’s bench, glanced at her. She ignored his concerned, inquiring look and climbed into the back of the carriage.
A diamond lamp lit it with a steady light. Dualayn had his medical bag open and plunked out clean bandages and a bottle of wood alcohol. She sat down across from him as he poured the antiseptic liquid into the cloth and then brought it to her forehead.
It stung. The sharp scent of the wood alcohol filled her nose. He dabbed at her wound. Her fingers clenched into the torn skirts of her dress. He frowned and leaned closer as he inspected her wound.
“It wasn’t a clean claw that scratched you,” he said. “And such a long furrow. What manner of bird did this?”
“A large one,” she said. “A dead one.”
“Mmm, large, yes,” he said. Sometimes, he didn’t hear everything she said when he focused on a problem. “I’ll need you to strip to your waist so I can attend to the rest.”
Her cheeks flamed. She nodded. Normally, she wouldn’t strip for any man—well, not unless they were promised and he was handsome and she had the delight of strawberry currant warming her veins—but Dualayn had that detached look in his eyes. Clinical.
I’m just his patient.
She unlaced her bodice and shrugged out of the dress, wincing as she twisted the scratches across her shoulders and back with her movement. She turned around, kneeling on the floor before she pulled off her chemise, drawing it out from beneath her skirt. She hugged the cloth to her breasts before sweeping her braid out of the way.
“Oh, dear, child, these are deep,” he said. “A large bird did this? And trained to attack?”
“It was a dead bird,” she said again. She looked over her shoulder as he washed a long scratch across her back. “Dje’awsa animated it with a jewel.”
Dualayn froze. “Dje’awsa? The White Lady’s associate? He’s here?”
“And wanted to kill Ōbhin and myself,” she said. “He’s with Ust.”
“Who?”
“The bandit leader. They are in Kash. They’re not happy with us.”
“Us? I have an agreement with Grey.”
“I don’t think they care. Ōbhin embarrassed Ust, and as far as Dje’awsa...” She shuddered, remembering the cold fear he’d inspired back at the farm. “Ōbhin and I stood up to him. We kept him from making Carstin into a walking corpse.”
“My, oh, my.” Dualayn rubbed a fresh cloth across a scratch on her upper arm. “Walking corpses. Dead birds. What sort of jewelchine lets you do that?”
“They were strangely cut gems, Father. No wires wrapped about them, but they kept the corpses moving. Even a severed head kept snapping at my feet.”
“Fascinating.”
She stiffened. “Fascinating?” She whirled around, clutching her chemise tight to her breasts. “He controlled them with obsidian! He brought them to life and tried to murder Ōbhin and me with them!”
He leaned back. “Obsidian, you say. Yes, yes, that makes sense. Dark applications. You are certain there were no wires?”
“Very certain,” she hissed. “It was magic!”
“That is a myth, child. I’ll get word to Grey and sort this out. Now turn around, child, I am not done cleaning the wounds.”
“How long will it take to get word to him?” she asked, turning away.
“Oh, a few days, I imagine.”
Would that be fast enough?
*
Ōbhin sat in the back of the wagon beside the two sick Dualayn was taking back to his lab to cure. They were wrapped in blankets. One coughed, his face a mass of blisters caused by facerot fever. The other shivered, his cheeks and temple flushed red and looking unnaturally dry. He muttered, his eyes closed. He smelled of rotten cheese.
Infection.
Even though Ōbhin’s back wasn’t healed all the way, he felt much improved. His rib throbbed, but it didn’t hurt as much to move. The bleeding had stopped, and he felt renewed, reinvigorated, by the topaz healer.
Shame gems that big are rare.
Tomorrow, he’d be healed the rest of the way. It took a jewelchine a day to recharge the power they held. It didn’t seem to matter on their size; that just affected how long they could operate or what they could do. They all took the same amount of time to refill their reserves. Why?
“I want us all on watch when we get back,” Ōbhin said.
Fingers nodded. He sat on the wagon’s edge across from Ōbhin while Smiles drove. Cerdyn rode with the carriage.
“I won’t let those bastards hurt Avena or anyone else,” Ōbhin muttered. Dje’awsa’s presence chilled his blood. If those corpses attacked the manor house . . . “If you smell anything like death, sound the alarm.”
“Death?” Smiles asked, throwing a look over his shoulder.
Ōbhin nodded. He didn’t know if they’d believe him. “The men Ust’s hooked up with, well, they smell like a charnel house. Like they rolled around in the dead.”
Five knuckles popped from Fingers clenching his fist. “Sounds like men of elegant and refined backgrounds.”
Smiles snorted in laughter. “Yes. They must belong to the peerage, and all the nobles are just too polite to inform them of the rank smell ‘bout their bodies.”
Fingers’s laughter boomed in the foggy night as they approached the city gates. Ōbhin wanted to laugh, but the memory of those dead stumbling after him churned nausea through his stomach. He glanced back at the city, watching the fog drift around the whitewashed buildings.
Just as they passed through the gates, a flare of scarlet light bathed the night again. A weight swelled in Ōbhin’s stomach. He didn’t know what Dje’awsa could do. He was terrified he’d find out before dawn.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“There’s another one of them red lights flashing over the city,” Bran reported as he peeked in through the manor house’s open front door. The night’s fog bled in behind him.
Ōbhin rolled his shoulders, his chainmail creaking. His back only held a tenderness. When they’d returned to the manor an hour ago, Dualayn had produced a spare healer and soothed the deep wound before repairing the scratches to Avena’s body despite her objections. She wanted him to help their patients.
It was the last of their healing. If anything came tonight . . . And Ust will come tonight. That Black-cursed bastard is doing something out there, Ōbhin thought.
“Are there darklings prowlin’ the night?” Bran asked, his boyish voice breathless. The coat of chain he wore looked too big for his frame, like a child wearing his father’s armor.
“Something worse,” Ōbhin said. Something real.
“Elohm’s Colours,” Bran muttered. “Well, I thought you should know. I’ll get back to the gate. We ain’t seen nothin’ but fog so far.”
“He’ll come,” Ōbhin repeated. It was nearing midnight.
Bran closed the door and darted outside. Ōbhin turned. The few men on the staff who weren’t members of the guard held makeshift clubs found on the firewood pile. Pharon trembled, still wearing his stiff waistcoat and trousers. Unlike the others, he had a backsword strapped to his waist. Ōbhin did not know where he’d gotten the single-edged, straight blade.
Miguil stood near the butler, determination on his near-beautiful face. The intensity heightened his full lips. The other three were gardeners. The women
were upstairs while Dualayn was in the lab. Ōbhin wasn’t sure if his employer cared that there was any danger. He had his patients to tend.
“You’re our last line of defense,” Ōbhin was saying. “I’ll—”
The stairs creaked. Avena descended dressed in her practice garb, a linen shirt tucked into her leather pants, a binder hanging off her belt. She wore flat-soled boots, her face set and ready. She gave him a warning look.
“Good, good,” Ōbhin said. “Avena’s in charge of the defense here. She’s got the most fighting experience of you all, and she’s seen what we’re up against.”
“Living corpses,” Pharon said, shaking his head. “Perish the thought that such horrors could stalk the night.”
Avena’s face pinched with revulsion. “You can’t even imagine.”
“Hopefully, none will get past me and my men,” Ōbhin said. “We’ll hold the gates, batter them down at the wall. If they do breach, you hold them off while the women go down the servants’ stairs and out the back door. The enemy shouldn’t find them that easily. They don’t seem intelligent. The women can swim across the lake to get to one of the neighbors’ houses.”
“And what about you?” Avena said.
Ōbhin shrugged. “I’m sure my men and I can figure something out.”
She gave him a studious look. Her lower lip quivered like she wished to object, sensing what he didn’t say. Then she nodded. “We’ll hold here. If they come tonight.”
“They will. They’ll want to hit us before we can get word to Grey. He’ll send help.” Ōbhin rubbed his black-gloved thumb across the emerald jewelchine on his sword’s pommel. He wished he knew how much charge it had, but there was no way to tell. He’d used it a lot this night. Would it last through a battle? “I wish I knew which street gangs in the city work for the Brotherhood and which work for the Rangers.”
Contact the wrong one, and they’d expose that Dualayn was under the Brotherhood’s protection. The rival crime syndicate would object, and they controlled more of the lands outside of the city walls.
“I’ll see you all at dawn,” Ōbhin said.
“Elohm’s Colours bless you,” Avena said. “And your guards.”
“May the Seven Tones resonate with us tonight,” Ōbhin said. “Strength in our limbs, Passion in our heart, Truth in our eyes, Life in our veins, and Breath in our lungs. May Father protect us and Mother love us through the Black night.”
Prayers to the Seven Tones said, he whirled and thrust open the doors. The thick fog swirled, a silver soup that choked out sight twenty paces away. He couldn’t see the gate or even a third of the way across the yard. He marched out into it.
The door closed behind him, snuffing out the jewelchine light.
Mist choked around him, caressing him with chilly fingers. His chainmail jangled and the leather of his sword belt creaked. The tenderness in his back swelled. He ignored it, focusing on the fog, searching for landmarks, the main gate.
Soon, the outer wall loomed out of the murk, but no gate. He’d veered off-course crossing the wet lawn. He looked right and left. The mist squeezed down on him like the dark mines beneath Gunya. A shudder ran through him at the memory of his cowardice. He could slip away. He could vanish in the fog. Ust and Dje’awsa would never find him. He wouldn’t feel the bloated grip of dead men wrapped about his throat or the skeletal finger bones clawing at his face. No silent hounds and rotten birds.
He turned to his right and marched to the gate, back straight.
Out of the boil of silver mist, the gatehouse appeared. A broad shape loomed in it, asking, “Ōbhin?”
“Yeah,” Ōbhin answered Fingers.
“Strolling the perimeter?”
Embarrassment warming his cheeks, Ōbhin grunted. “Just double-checking.”
“You don’t think them corpses can climb over the wall?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s comfortin’,” Smiles said. “We might be standin’ here playin’ twiddlin’ sticks while a horde of corpses stumbles along the lawn in the mist.”
Ōbhin grunted. “Not much we can do.”
The manor house had three gates. He had Aduan and Cerdyn at the blackberry gate while Bran and Dajouth held the forest gate. Ōbhin, Smiles, and Fingers would guard the main one. He’d need twenty times this number to cover the wall in this fog.
“Well, at least if they do get over the wall, they’ll never find the manor house,” Smiles said with a glib tongue.
Fingers chuckled. “I couldn’t find my cock to hold it while I pissed.”
“I thought that was just the danger of gaining a ponderous belly,” Smiles answered.
“My belly isn’t ponderous.” Fingers smacked the front of his chainmail. It rattled. “It’s stout. I can still find my pecker. More than your wife can say about yours. Problem of havin’ a tiny one.”
Smiles threw back his head and laughed. Ōbhin snorted, the tension melting out of him. Armor jangled on the three of them as Fingers’s rumbling laughs joined them. Smiles ran a hand across the back of his head.
“My wife is a forgivin’ woman,” Smiles said. “But she must have found it. She’s pregnant. Missed her last two flows.”
Fingers’s laughter cut off as Ōbhin asked, “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You never say nothin’ before she’s missed two of her flows,” Smiles said, his voice earnest. “You invite the Black to disrupt things.”
Ōbhin opened his mouth to congratulate his friend when red flashed on the eastern horizon, bleeding through the thick fog. A chilly tingle raced down Ōbhin’s spine, the words dying on his lips. He ran a dry tongue across the roof of his mouth.
“What darkling mischief is that?” demanded Fingers.
“Horrors wrought with obsidian,” answered Ōbhin.
*
Avena sat down on the base of the stairs, staring at the door. An hour had passed since Ōbhin had left. She could feel the night dragging on. The windows all had their curtains drawn tight, sealing the jewelchine light in the room. Not that she could have seen anything if she did draw back the drapes. Just fog.
She wanted it to be over. For Ust and Dje’awsa to just attack so her skin could stop feeling like it was being stretched taught over her muscles and bones. No one talked. Just paced. Dynoth and Glien drifted around the side of the stairs while the third gardener, Shamit, paced slow circles before the window to the right of the main doors. Miguil and Pharon stood close to each other.
Her eyes kept drifting to them. The two men shared glances and reassuring smiles. Their hands brushed and their fingers twitched like they wanted to clasp the others. She’d never seen how obvious their love was. They had to keep it hidden.
They must be too nervous to pretend indifference, she thought, watching as their fingers brushed again, almost entwining before they pulled away. They exchanged a glance that struck Avena’s memories. Chames used to smile like that.
Her first promised swam in her imagination, his handsome face, like a young Dualayn but lean, his lips full and strong, his chin and cheekbones sculpted from living marble. His eyes held joyful life.
Avena wanted to be angry at Miguil for her embarrassment, but she couldn’t muster even indignation at the two men aching to support the other. She felt suddenly so alone. A selfish pettiness rippled through her.
Shame followed. Why should she hate them? She’d never loved Miguil. She understood that now. Maybe Chames . . . She wanted to believe she’d loved him, but her feelings for Miguil were as thin as a layer of varnish over furniture. It didn’t take much to scratch through it. She’d almost died this night, so it seemed foolish to hate the pair for finding what she yearned for. Maybe she’d never possessed it. Maybe Chames had been her one chance for love. At least Miguil and Pharon had found it, even if they were both men.
That fact didn’t even seem to matter. They might not survive to see the morning.
She glanced at the door. She felt a renewed vigor in her.
An eagerness for the fight to come so she could stand up and defend her new family. She wouldn’t stand by helpless like she had with Evane.
She wanted to go to the two men over there and express her joy that they had found someone to love. That they could love and didn’t have that emptiness in them. Smiles and Jilly had it. Dualayn had it with poor Bravine. Surely Kaylin had loved her husband to be so changed by his death.
Avena started to move towards the men when Jilly shouted from the top of the stairs. “There’s been another light!” Avena glanced at the maid in her dark dress, a heavy, brass candlestick clutched in her hand. “Something dark stalks the night!”
“We still have Elohm and His Colours with us,” Avena said. “Who knows, maybe He’ll unleash Reylis, Archon-Supreme. Maybe she’ll lead His devas to do battle with the darklings that walk the night.” Are you a darkling, Dje’awsa?
It seemed a foolish thought to Avena. Darklings were twisted creatures with spindly arms who bled shadows. They could jaunt through them, striking out of the darkness. But the Warding was intact. It had to be.
“Elohm, bathe us in your Colours so bright, no dark can stain them this night,” Pharon prayed. He held a prism clutched in his hand.
Avena bowed her head as his benediction echoed through the room.
*
“Wished they’d just come,” Fingers muttered.
It had been an hour since the last light. Dawn was only a few more hours away. It was the darkest point of the night, the farthest from sunset. Ōbhin had heard Laythins from the plateaus east of his home speak of the world shifting at strange angles in the hours before dawn. When the impossible became possible and things trapped beyond this reality could slip through.
Ōbhin tried to shake those thoughts. However Dje’awsa worked his arts, he used jewels. No different than the emerald on the end of his sword. The sorcerer’s twisted depravity allowed him to desecrate the dead and use their bodies like those clockwork automatons setting the nobility’s imagination on fire. To Dje’awsa, the dead were just resources.
