Seeker

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  John entered a combination and presented his eyes to be scanned. The thick metal door hissed open. There was only one object inside, the last thing he owned from his mother. Lying in the center of the safe’s padded interior was a disruptor.

  John felt a deep revulsion at the sight of the weapon, but he took hold of it anyway and hauled it out. It was as heavy as it looked, its iridescent metal solid almost all the way through, with its harness of thick leather adding to its weight. He carried it to the bed and sat with it on his lap. Touching the disruptor made him nervous and slightly sick to his stomach, but despite this, he forced himself to examine every side of it. Life or death, sanity or insanity—he was holding these things in his hands.

  Do what has to be done, his mother had told him. Briac had always been against him, Quin wouldn’t help him now, and Gavin was barely sane. It was up to John to fulfill his promise. He would likely have to do unpleasant things, but he would do what had to be done, in the best way he could.

  What would Quin think if she could see him? Quin. He imagined her sitting beside him, pictured himself leaning down to kiss her. There will be many things that try to pull you from the path. Hatred is one, and love is another.

  He forced himself to focus. The disruptor had been created to instill terror. If it did its job, he would not need to fire it. And Quin—she had already told him she would be far away.

  CHAPTER 10

  MAUD

  Around midnight, the moon had still not risen, and she was alone in the near blackness of the forest. She moved with the silent tread she had learned as a little girl. It was the only way she knew to walk anymore. Since she had been stretched out so many times, her body would only carry her along as it perceived time should flow: smoothly, steadily, rhythmically.

  The children on the estate called her the Young Dread. It was not her name, of course. She did have a name, though no one used it anymore. She could remember it if she wanted to.

  She thought of the three apprentices—two were sworn Seekers now—as children, though by some accountings they were older than she. That was a riddle with no clear answer.

  Maud. It came to her, floating up into consciousness like a piece of treasure rising from the floor of the ocean. My name is Maud.

  She’d heard them call her companion the Big Dread, though he was, in fact, the Middle Dread, and her dear master was the Old Dread. Those young Seekers had not yet been taught all they would come to know about the Dreads.

  Across her shoulders she carried a young deer she had brought down with an arrow. It was growing heavy as she walked, but weight meant little. She did what she must, regardless of discomfort.

  To a normal eye, there was not enough light in the forest for her to find her way. For the Young Dread, however, even the faint background glow of the stars was sufficient. Perhaps it was an effect of being stretched out so often, or perhaps it was her old master’s teaching, but her eyes were as sensitive to light as they needed to be. It might be they had learned to take all the time necessary to collect the light around them until they had enough for the work at hand.

  Far away there was a noise. She paused midstep to listen, her foot hovering inches above the ground. She could hear the distant song of the river, night birds hunting among the trees, and insects even, moving through the soil at her feet. But this sound was something different. It had come from south of her, in the wildest part of the estate. As she listened, she heard it again. It was the sound of trouble.

  She shifted immediately, her motions accelerating. In an instant, the deer was off her shoulders and on the ground. Before it had even touched the forest floor, she was sprinting through the trees, heading for the giant elm at the edge of the clearing to the south. Her body moved so quickly, she could scarcely feel the ground as she sped over it. Then she was at the tree, leaping to its lower branches. Like a jaguar, she scaled the trunk to the very top and stood concealed among its leaves, looking south toward the source of the noise.

  There were horses there, six of them, with men on their backs. She scanned the entirety of the estate from her vantage point. These men and horses would be visible to no one else yet. They’d chosen the ideal route to enter the estate undetected.

  She threw her sight, as her old master had taught her, sending it out across the distance to touch these men. At once, she was able to examine them closely, as though they stood directly in front of her. They were carrying weapons and wearing masks—but one was familiar to her, even with his face covered.

  They had a disruptor. The familiar one was securing it with straps around the body of another man.

  She threw her hearing at them, bringing their words to her ears as though she stood among them.

  “It’s bloody heavy,” the man said as the disruptor was tightened across his back.

  “Remember, it’s only value is terror,” the other one said, the one she recognized. His voice was quiet, and it was all wrong. He sounded like a demon, not like a person, his voice hissing and scratching. “Do not fire unless I order it. Do you understand? There are innocent people here. All I want is the stone dagger.”

  The man grunted an acknowledgment, and his fingers explored the disruptor’s controls. The other men were checking their weapons as the horses moved about restlessly.

  The estate was under attack.

  She would throw her thoughts. She would reach out with her mind to the Middle Dread, her companion. It was the fastest way to alert him, and he would decide if he wished to alert the others on the estate. Mentally she reached toward him, sending her mind across the distance to his small stone cottage. He was there; she could feel him. Yet with the slightest touch of her mind against his, she recoiled. To her old master she could communicate easily this way. To the Middle it was different. The dislike between them was so great, the thoughts died in her before she could send them.

  She would have to tell him in person. He would strike her, she knew, as he did when she said anything to him that was not in response to a question he had asked. But he was unlikely to give her a full beating when he heard what she had to say.

  The Young Dread swung down from the tree, dropping from branch to branch until she had landed on the soft forest ground. She was already running.

  CHAPTER 11

  SHINOBU

  Shinobu had three practice dummies set up across the floor of the training barn. It was past midnight and he had the place to himself. He moved from one figure to the next, traveling over the floor with a dancer’s grace, then exploding blows into the dummies’ bodies as he moved past them. He had no weapons tonight—only his fists.

  The largest dummy was roughly the size of his father, and he paid it special attention. One strike for every day of the last month. He pummeled the figure’s midsection, driving the rough mannequin back along the floor. Then he was on to the next one. This one was close to Briac’s size, and it was easy to imagine Briac’s face on it as Shinobu rained punches into the canvas. And the third one, the smallest dummy, who was that? Maybe Quin? He felt an outpouring of pity as he attacked it. He worked its face, hitting harder and harder. The more deadly Shinobu was, the faster his fight would be finished. He was putting the figure out of its misery. With an uppercut, he knocked it to the ground.

  “Nothing was what we thought,” he muttered to the small dummy as it lay on the floor. “I stayed only for you.”

  In the silence that followed, he stood still and listened, a knuckle dripping blood onto the floor. There was a distant roar. Like a storm. Or like … fire? As he moved toward the barn’s door, he heard voices yelling across the commons.

  CHAPTER 12

  QUIN

  “You’re filthy. Do you know that?” Quin asked the horse as she grabbed its muzzle. “It’s a bit hard to tell now if you’re a horse or a pig.”

  She was in the stable, grooming Yellen, the enormous bay horse her mother had given her when she’d turned ten. Yellen nipped at her in a friendly way as she curried his back. Beyond Yell
en was a fresh pile of hay at the back of the stall. Quin wondered if she could sleep there tonight. She had done that a few times when she was much younger, curled up next to her huge horse. It was more appealing at the moment than sleeping at home.

  A few tears slid down her cheeks and landed on the floor of the stall. Roughly she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. This had happened a lot in the last month—nothing, and then suddenly tears. Another one rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it; she was tired of her own weakness.

  “Turn!” she ordered. Yellen stared at her blankly, his ears twitching. She pulled his head around and moved to his other side. “You’ve forgotten English, haven’t you, you great lump?”

  With the horse, she still had a sense of humor. With people, her humor had dried up. She hadn’t spent much time with Yellen that year. John had gotten her attention instead. But John was gone. Quin herself was supposed to be gone, and yet here she was. Now the horse was the only one she knew who didn’t make her think of things she’d rather forget.

  “Easy,” she soothed as Yellen stamped a foot. “Or I’ll leave you muddy.”

  She had vowed to herself that she would leave, but she’d stayed. The night John left, she’d slept alone in the loft of the barn on the cliff. In the morning, she’d been woken by sunlight coming in through the eastern window.

  She lay there for several minutes, feeling the warmth on her closed eyelids. As the sun slowly came up, she stayed motionless, until its light bathed her arms and hands. Then the heat of its rays sparked pain from the athame brand on her left wrist. Even bandaged, it began to throb.

  It’s still there. It will always be there, reminding me of what my hands have done.

  She could leave, she thought then, but it would not change things. She would know what she was, and every time a stranger looked at her, she would wonder if they knew it too. And if she left, what would happen to Fiona and Shinobu? They would be left on the estate without her, stranded with Briac.

  So, she had stayed.

  Briac had taken her and Shinobu on five more assignments since that first night. She understood it all now: the wealth behind the estate, how her family survived. And there was nothing virtuous about it.

  With each new assignment, thoughts of leaving had grown more remote. She’d been raised to obey Briac’s word as law. It was difficult to break that habit. And the more she helped him, the more assignments she carried out, the more she was becoming like him and the less she deserved to get away. John had said she was born to use the athame, and she wondered if she was also born to be like Briac.

  Now, in the stables, she watched her arms moving the brushes across the horse’s back and was overcome by the feeling that her limbs were disconnected from her, as though her body belonged to someone else. Her new scars were healing. There was the line on her forearm, where her father had cut her during that last practice fight, the small cut on her neck from the Young Dread’s knife, and there was the brand on her left wrist. The blisters from the brand had gone, leaving only the shape of an athame, still bright pink and tender. The scars also felt foreign, like marks on another person’s body.

  Without noticing, she’d stopped brushing Yellen and was staring at her right hand, inside the strap of the bristle brush. She moved her little finger to assure herself that the hand still listened to her some of the time.

  “John …” she said aloud, then stopped, embarrassed.

  She often imagined he was with her, his warm arms around her as she laid her head on his chest. When those daydreams ended, she would feel cold, and wonder if his eyes were lonely now, without her. Even so, she was glad he was gone. John had still wanted to become a Seeker, even after she’d warned him. In leaving, he had saved himself from a profound mistake.

  Yellen stamped his front foot again and twitched his ears.

  “Easy,” she murmured.

  The horse stamped again and began pulling at his lead rope. She heard the other horses in their stalls, whickering and stamping also. Then she noticed a smell.

  Smoke.

  She stopped moving and listened. There were distant shouts, and something else—a low roar that she now realized had been present for some time. Quin slipped out of Yellen’s stall and over to the stable door.

  Sliding the door open, she felt a wave of heat and found herself staring out at a wall of fire. It took a moment to understand what she was seeing. The trees near the barn were burning. Not just burning—they were being completely consumed by flames.

  People were yelling across the commons, and she could see shapes in the distance—many horses running, with men on their backs. The estate was under attack.

  Quin slid the door shut and leaned against it for a moment, assessing the situation. The fire was only yards away from the wooden structure of the stable. The horses were stamping and whinnying, some of them kicking at their stalls.

  Putting a hand on Yellen’s nose to calm him, she slipped his bridle over his head, then quickly threw a blanket and saddle onto his back.

  She peeked through the doors at the opposite end of the stable and saw darkness. The men and fire had not reached that side of the barn, so she pushed those doors open and herded the horses from their stalls. The smoke was getting thicker and they were beginning to panic, but Quin swung a rope at their flanks, driving them into a run toward the open doorway. Out in the night air, they milled about her, too frightened to move farther from the stable.

  Something flashed across Quin’s line of sight, about twenty yards away. As she reached for Yellen’s reins, an oak tree near the dairy barn burst into flame. She glimpsed a torch high up in its branches, and now she could see the person who had thrown it, a figure in dark clothing and a mask, riding away across the commons on horseback.

  The weather had been dry for many weeks, and with a roar, the tree began to burn fiercely, sending the horses into a terror. One bolted wildly, crashing through the others. Quin was caught in the crush of bodies as all of the animals, Yellen included, took off for the forest.

  She fell, but someone was there, catching her.

  “Quin!”

  “Shinobu!”

  There was ash in his hair and smears of it across his face.

  “Come on,” he said. “We have to get to the woods!”

  Through a cloud of smoke, they ran until they reached the trees. Then they paused beneath the branches, coughing.

  “A cottage is on fire,” he told her. “Yours, I think. I saw it across the commons.”

  Like her, Shinobu had his whipsword at his waist. An old crossbow that looked about to fall apart and a quiver of bolts were slung across his back. He had raided the meager weapons supply in the training barn.

  “Who’s attacking?” She asked the question, thinking of hordes of shadowy victims coming to the estate to get revenge upon them. But of course there was no mysterious answer. As soon as the words had come out of her mouth, she knew who was attacking. She felt a sick twinge in her stomach. Even though he’s kicking me out, John had said, I have to find my way back. Quin realized some part of her had been waiting for him. But not like this. Was he really burning down the estate?

  “We’ll get a better look from the other side,” Shinobu told her, not meeting her eyes.

  “My mother?”

  “I haven’t seen her.”

  She started to run again, but Shinobu caught her arm.

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait. What do we want to do?”

  “We’ll find my mother, and then our fathers—”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “I agree we should find Fiona, but why do we want to find Briac and Alistair?” he asked.

  “We’re under attack! They’re better fighters than we are.”

  “We’re not under attack. They’re under attack. Which means they’re distracted.” He stared at his feet, a lifetime of loyalty making it difficult for him to finish the thought out loud. At last, he looked directly into her
eyes and said, “We don’t talk about it, Quin, but why should we stay, after what they’ve made us do?”

  Quin struggled for a moment with an automatic instinct to follow her father. But Shinobu was right. He was saying the words she should have said. He was suggesting they do what she should have done a month ago. The estate might burn, but this was not a home anymore.

  She said slowly, “We could find Fiona and get away.”

  “If we’re lucky, Briac and Alistair will think we were killed,” he told her. “This is a chance for us. A perfect chance. It won’t come again.”

  She nodded her agreement. “All right. Let’s get my mother.”

  They ran until they had circled around the edge of the commons and were nearer the cottages. There they came to a stop, crouching behind a fallen tree. The men on horseback were setting fire to the buildings. Her own cottage was burning. Behind it, farther away, she could see Shinobu’s, also ablaze. And the others, the cottages deeper in the woods, many of which had not been used for decades. All burning.

  “Do you see her?” Quin asked.

  “No—yes. She’s there!”

  Halfway across the commons, heading toward the pastures beyond the dairy, was Fiona. Her beautiful face was twisted in a look of terror, and the ends of her hair were on fire, orange flame upon red hair, streaming behind her as she ran. Why was she running across the meadow instead of into the woods? With a sinking heart, Quin noticed her mother’s wobbly gait. She was drunk.