Tahn awoke to stars that still held their places in the heavens.
Despite his exhaustion, he propped himself up on his elbows. He looked east and wondered if the sun would ever cease its cycle, and why each day he paused to consider the dawn. Maybe it was more than mere solace.
The smell of dew rose from the ground. The comforting fragrance eased into him, and he closed his eyes to envision the dawn. The moment stretched out as he watched in his mind’s eye the path of the sun. Suddenly, the image flooded with red. The sun shone a bloody hue, and the mountains, clouds, treetops, everything in his mind turned scarlet.
The world ignited, the air burning and the rocks melting into rivers of blood. The sun shimmered in hues of crimson and sable, flickering like a man blinking blood from his eyes. Tahn began to choke, the horror in his mind making it hard to breathe. He couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t free himself from the images in his head.
Strangled pleas gurgled from his throat. Then hands were on his shoulders, shaking him. Words cascaded down to him as though spoken from very far away.
“Tahn, wake up!”
But he was awake. He tried to say so, only his swollen tongue wouldn’t obey.
Hands slapped his face, but the vision held. His heart thumped in his ears and behind his eyes, the rhythm slowing, growing louder, like the single, great beat they’d heard in the mist. Then stillness. The scarlet sun faded.
“Silent gods!” he screamed. But the sound of it echoed small and only in his head.
A hand struck his back, batting him. Soon after, water splashed his face. But the sensations were distant and soft the way a bird’s wing sounds across a lake, or the cry of a loon comes muffled by the cloak of night.
“Tahn. Breathe,” he heard, and thought he knew the voice, but couldn’t place it.
He gasped a breath as if he was that loon, surfacing from a long dive, and a painful rush of air seared his lungs. He panted as a jumble of fiery colors streaked through his mind. In their wake a solitary disk of light hung in a blue sky. He opened his eyes and looked into Sutter’s worried face.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
Tahn stared at his friend without answering. When his breathing returned to normal, he again felt the throbbing in his foot.
“That must have been some dream you were having,” Sutter said. “I hope there was a girl in it, at least.”
Tahn looked over his friend’s shoulder at the break of dawn on the horizon. He hoped there were answers in Recityv. He hoped they reached Recityv. He hadn’t yet passed from melura to adulthood, and he’d never felt further from it.
* * *
They followed the river north for two days. The afternoon of the third day, something curious fell from the sky and settled on Tahn’s cheek. He wiped at the bit, and drew back a finger smeared with ash. They rode onward. And soon flakes of black and grey were falling like snow.
Sutter held out a hand to catch one. “Forest fire?”
“I doubt it,” Tahn answered.
Sutter nodded. “Then let’s stay near the river. My neck is too sore to fight today.” He smiled weakly.
Ignoring him, Tahn maneuvered his horse in the direction of the smell.
“Of course,” Sutter said with a shrug, falling in behind him.
Soon, the smell of fire filled the air, but what burned was something more than wood.
They climbed the wooded hill that rose from the river valley. The ground grew carpeted with soot and ash, the rain of spent embers coming like a strange, quiet storm. Tahn checked his fletching, and urged his mount upward through a tight bank of spruce.
On the other side, blackened trees stripped of foliage spired like bony fingers. Some still smoldered, smoke lifting lazily to the sky. The ground stood charred with intricate patterns of burnt needles like tight embroidery. But the number of burnt trees didn’t explain the fall of ash that piled now at their feet, the flakes continuing to descend softly around them.
They dismounted, drawing their weapons. They emerged into a small semicircular clearing. Sutter’s eyes widened as Tahn whispered denial.
Ahead, the face of a short granite cliff hung in graceful, molten waves, like a banner sagging where it had lost its mooring. Steam issued from pockets of the liquefied rock, sending tendrils of smoke up against the blackened face of the escarpment.
“Abandoning gods,” Sutter muttered. “What makes rock run like honey from a hive?”
Tahn surveyed the ground, searching for something specific. To their right, a circle of earth glinted dully in the light filtered through the ash-laden sky. His heart fluttered in his chest. He took four long strides and bent to brush ash from the glazen surface. At the center of the black-glass ring, two holes burrowed into the earth. Holes the size of a man’s hand. Surveying the rest of the clearing, he noticed several more dark rings, some larger than others, some at the center of depressions in the clearing around them.
Brushing ash from his hands, Tahn stood, again pulling his bow to half draw, and continued forward. Dark ripples in the cliff hung like stone curtains, and appeared to seal a doorway into the granite where an obvious footpath ended at a puddle of cooling rock.
“That’ll do.” The voice rang out over the clearing and startled Tahn, causing him to fumble his arrow from its rest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Heresy
The gods were wise. They never wrote down their intentions.
—Rebuttal to the concept of the Charter, given in the Dissent of Denolan SeFeery
A lone candle lit Grant’s home. He sat at his table in its glow, the silence and emptiness wrapping about him. His hands still bore the dirt of Mikel’s grave—the lad buried next to the others. Too many.
In his dirty hands he held a charm the boy had always carried with him—a token left to him by a mother he’d never known. The lad had never worn it, but still had never been without it. Maybe it had been Mikel’s hope for reunion, or a reminder of the neglect that had brought him to the Scar to begin with.
The boy had never shared its purpose, nor had Grant asked.
But now he turned it over and over in fingers soiled with the boy’s final earth, and thought about choices. And death. He thought about his many wards. And he thought about the soil of his own soul.
He held little use for men. Little hope. The few who bore their burdens well had his esteem. But they wouldn’t last against the tide that was coming. The tide of bad choices.
He’d known it when Helaina had sent him here.
He knew it better now.
He couldn’t stand against it without thinking boldly, even if what he considered was only an exercise to ease his battered mind and spirit.
He looked about, taking in the modest home. It held no touch of warmth. They only existed here. Basic necessities, shelter, nothing more.
It seemed barrenness had gotten into everything. And yet, there was a seed of hope. He thumbed the parchment on the table before him.
He gave a bitter smile as he considered that his hope would to others be heresy. The world had been stood on its head. So it might take heresy to set down what he dared now to write.
The patter of small feet interrupted his thoughts. He looked up to see one of his young wards standing at the mouth of the hall, staring at him. She was four. She’d been born with a disfigurement of the lips. She couldn’t quite smile, or close her mouth. You could always see her upper teeth, crooked as they were.
He’d not tried to find her a home. The life she’d have known in the company of cruel children and adults who traded on such disfigurements would have been dreary. He imagined tenendra camps where oddities were caged. And he thought of panderers with base clientele.
My good fortune. Her sunny spirit often proved the only cheer he knew in a day. In the absence of the jeers and cruel jokes she’d have known elsewhere, here she had all the confidence she deserved. He waved her over, and she ran and leapt into his lap, hugging him close.
“Where did you go this time?” she asked, always eager to hear stories.
“Just supplies, dear one.” He would not tell her yet of Mikel, who she considered a brother.
She smiled with her ruined lips. He smiled back.
“Did you get any molasses sticks?” Her voice slurred around the name of the confection, her lips unable to make the sound. She looked up expectantly.
He took two from his breast pocket and handed her one. “Make it last,” he said.
She nodded. “Did you meet any interesting people?” In addition to the stories, the girl always wished to know of others, as she’d only ever known the other wards—she longed to meet new people.
The man returned her nod. “Some interesting people indeed. But not anyone you’d have liked. You’re much nicer than them.”
“You always say that,” she replied. “Maybe sometime someone will come to visit us, and then we’ll know who is the nicest.”
The man smiled. “Yes, maybe.”
The girl then looked at the tabletop. “What are you doing?”
Finally, he set aside the charm and put his own molasses stick in his lips. “I’ve got some things to write down,” he said, and ran his hands over the parchment laid flat on the table before him.
In the sallow light of his single candle, the parchment looked brown, like his skin. He was no author. His profession and skill came first of the body. But he had a keen appreciation of ethics. And he lived by wit as much as skill. He knew how to write this. Whether it would come to anything, he didn’t know. But, he did know the act alone would comfort him.
And just now, that more than anything was what he needed.
“Can I help?” the girl asked. “I know all my letters.”
Grant looked into the girl’s eyes and wondered if it wouldn’t be most appropriate, after all, to have a little one help him write such a thing as he was set to write. After all, it was for her and all those like her that he meant to do it.
“I will write, and you will ensure I make the letters well.”
She put her molasses stick in her mouth and leaned forward to begin.
He took up his pen and dipped it into a phial of black ink. He paused a moment, and looked into his candle. Once he was finished, could he find a way to give it purpose?
He knew but one way. And access to that power remained a myth and mystery to most. Going to where it lay guarded was a fool’s errand.
But pausing with his ready pen, a man watching after the world’s orphans, an outcast with the audacity to even consider writing what he now planned, he thought himself the perfect fool. For only fools went where courage and reason would not. And that was where he would need to go if tonight’s scribblings were more than simply his need to purge his anger and frustration and sadness.
With one rough hand, he stroked the honey-colored hair of his young ward. With the other, he put ink to parchment and began to write.
He penned deep into the night, thinking of a better world for the wards that came into his care. A better world for this girl with the beautiful, ruined smile. On and on he wrote, pouring out the quiet thunder of his heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Reunion
Poetry. Real poetry. One neither writes nor reads it well, unless she’s suffered. And arguing the point just proves you’re too happy to know the difference.
—Defense of the Nallan poets made by Julia Hipwell during the Curration Conference, Recityv
Penit came alongside the muscled auctioneer. He held his head straight. His feet had been heavily chalked. As he strode the boards, with each step a large dust cloud plumed. He took his place at center stage—so different from his pageant wagon. This time the auctioneer’s hand did not even fully rise to indicate a price before sticks flew high against the late-afternoon sun.
Seeing Penit put up for auction, a flood of strength ripped through Wendra.
The auctioneer’s hand gestured convulsively, acknowledging the raised bids, his eyes wide with the number of slavers determined to purchase Penit. All were bidding, except Jastail.
The song she’d been hearing in phrases leapt inside her now. Strong. More fully formed. Dark, disturbing melody. She wanted to unleash it in this auction yard. On this auction yard.
She struggled with painful memories, and lurched from Jastail’s grasp. When she tried to sing out her anger, instead of song came a torn wail. It rose, shattering the silence. And she fell, her scream echoing harmlessly above the crowd.
Jastail helped her to her feet. His eyes carried a hint of delight. But she was too angry to worry about him. The blinding rage began to build again inside her. She looked at Penit, who stared at her now from the boards, a grateful smile on his lips. He raised his bound wrists to wave to her, and was cuffed by the auctioneer.
“Be still, my lady,” said Jastail. “You’ve no need of any of this. I intend to purchase the boy.”
Wendra looked with a strange mix of revulsion and gratitude at the highwayman, who slowly lifted his stick and did not drop it again until only his marker remained high against the pitiless sky.
* * *
Wendra awoke before she opened her eyes. She lay quiet, aware that she wasn’t alone.
The back of her throat throbbed, as though a bruise were forming there. She needed a cool drink. But she lay still and continued to regulate her breath in the slow cycles of sleep. A slight movement made her conscious of another hand in her own, and reality crashed in upon her in happy, bitter waves. Penit.
She took several deep breaths, then opened her eyes. The boy slept in a chair with his head against the bedpost, his small hand curled around her fingers. He looked peaceful, a vague smile on his dirty cheeks. She squeezed his hand. Tears ran from the corners of her eyes. Soon, Penit awoke, and the smile grew on his lips.
“You’re all right,” he said with bright enthusiasm.
“And you,” Wendra said. “I thought I’d lost you. What happened?”
Penit’s smile faded as quickly as it came. “I followed the river,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Sooner or later, you always come to people if you follow water. I made good time, too. No dawdling, no sidetracks. Kept to my script, you know. I kept thinking of you alone in that cave with the fever. No one ever depended on me that way,” he said, trailing off.
Wendra put her other hand on top of his, pressing it between her own. “You did all you could,” she said softly. “Don’t be ashamed.”
The door to the small room opened and Jastail walked in. “You’re awake, good. You look weak, but we must leave. Be about it.” He went to a dresser opposite her and pulled it back from the wall. He pried the back panel off and began loading a satchel with items hidden there. He smiled at her with one side of his mouth, and went back to his work.
Penit stood from his chair and squared his shoulders to Jastail. He kept Wendra’s hand, but raised his chin. “Let us go.”
Jastail didn’t look up. “Boy, for the trouble this is turning out to be, I almost agree with you. And I admire your asking. Now, see that you help the lady, and save your comments on me until we’re clear of this place. I don’t want to have to gag you.”
Penit fumed, shaking with pent-up anger. Wendra raised herself on one elbow. “What now?” she asked. “You bought Penit’s freedom. It’s time for the boy and I to be going.”
Jastail looked up. “You can’t buy what you already own.” He cinched the satchel shut. “You’re an insightful woman, but your belief in people cripples your judgment.”
A hint of regret edged his words, but Wendra couldn’t tell if it was for her or for hopeful people in general. He rose and shouldered the parcel. “Don’t dawdle. Get up and come to the rear door. Mind my warning; we’re not among friends here. And they’d have the use of you before the chalk is put to your feet.
“I need to buy a horse. I’ll be at the rear door in a meal’s time. There’s bread and root for you at the table, and clean water. Eat and be ready.”
He clo
sed the door and left them alone again.
“He’s the one that brought me here,” Penit said. “I’d followed the river half a day when he and four others found me. I tried to explain about you, I told him you were sick and needed help. He asked me for directions. I told him I would take him there. But he said I looked ill, and that he’d send me with his friends to a safe place, and bring you back himself. He wouldn’t listen to me. So I finally gave him directions to the cave.” Again Penit trailed off. “And now he has us both.”
“What do you mean?” Wendra asked. She sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled Penit around to face her.
“You saw it,” Penit said. “He intended to sell me. All of us were being sold. That’s what he meant that he couldn’t buy what he owned.”
“He doesn’t own you,” Wendra said firmly. “Or me. We’re leaving here together, right now.”
Penit backed away, shaking his head. “No. I don’t like him, but the others know we aren’t traders. They’ll capture us as soon as we’re in the street. The others … they do horrible things … and it would’ve been worse if it weren’t for Dwayne.”
“Dwayne?”
“I met him when they put me in the pen. That’s where they keep everyone that will go to the boards with chalk on their feet. They put me and him together and made us fetch things, running all the time. Racing. Dwayne helped the younger ones.”
Wendra took a short breath. She didn’t want to think about how young the children he spoke of might be.
“He helped the older people, too, kind of showing them how to deal with the traders in order to get better food, or at least more food. He made it all kind of a game. And it kept me from getting too scared.”
Wendra drew Penit close and hugged him. “If we could take him with us, we would.” She thought a moment. “We’ll let Jastail take us away from here. Once we’re far enough away, we’ll decide what to do. But I won’t let him sell either of us.” She swallowed against the fear and rage that battled inside her.
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