by Jon Skovron
She walked slowly down the village’s one dirt road. With only twenty buildings in total, it wasn’t long before she reached the mass grave at the far end that she had dug for her people. Strangely, it was the only thing that seemed bigger than she remembered. She marveled that she had been able to do such a task alone, small as she’d been. Of course, it had taken her a long time, and throughout it all, she hadn’t been able to truly comprehend the enormity of what she was doing. She’d only known it needed to be done.
She looked at the mass grave now and comprehended it completely. How could someone kill this many people? She knew the answer to that question, because she had done it herself. Few set out simply to massacre, but through their arrogance and entitlement, through their rigid adherence to ideals or ideology, they did so because they truly believed that the sacrifice was worth it. Teltho Kan had been developing a weapon that he believed would save the whole empire. Fifty lives must have seemed a paltry cost. Perhaps he had even talked of the “greater good,” just as she had when she led all those people to their deaths against the biomancer Progul Bon, the Jackal Lord Vikma Bruea, and their army of the dead.
But sacrificing lives to save lives was no longer a solution she could accept. There had to be another way. In the end, Hurlo had believed that as well. He hadn’t been able to find that new way, and perhaps neither would she. But if she had to die while searching for the solution, she couldn’t think of any cause more worthy.
She turned away from the graveyard and walked back through the village. She looked into the broken huts as she went, curious to see what remained. Mostly it was plates and cups, pots and tools. Some rotting clothes and a few moldering dolls. She went into her own hut and found her trunk of treasures. The wood was blackened from fire set by the imperial soldiers, but the contents, mostly shells and bones, remained undamaged. She considered taking a few, but when she picked up one of the shells, it felt impossibly heavy. She reminded herself that she was here to lay down burdens, not pick up new ones.
The home of Shamka, the village elder, was the biggest and sturdiest. It had survived better than the other buildings. Even the roof, sheets of overlapping slate, was intact. She had never been allowed into his home when she was a child, so she found herself unable to resist taking a peek now.
His accommodations of an iron-frame bed and feathered mattress were far from luxurious, but had probably been the envy of everyone else in the village. No books, of course. No one in her village had been able to read. But there was a finely crafted table and cabinet made from a wood that she was certain didn’t grow on the island.
She surveyed this “opulence” with wry amusement until two items on the top shelf of the cabinet caught her attention. The first was a small hand sickle. The blade was etched with what appeared to be lettering of some kind, although the language was unfamiliar to her. Next to the sickle was a painted wooden mask with a pointed snout decorated with real animal whiskers and sharp canine teeth. Was it a wolf or a dog?
She picked up the mask and examined it carefully.
Or no, perhaps it was a jackal.
She’d planned on returning to the monastery at Galemoor once she had finished with Bleak Hope. But the objects she discovered in Shamka’s hut seemed to lend credence to Vikma Bruea’s claim that the people of the Southern Isles shared a direct connection with the Jackal Lords and necromancy. And therefore with the hundreds of girls who had been murdered on Dawn’s Light.
It was an idea that had haunted her in the months since their confrontation, but she’d been unable to find any evidence. She’d checked the library on Galemoor, which was the second largest in the empire. But the only thing she had found was a crumbling scroll that contained a rather poetic account of the forming of the empire. It spoke of “angels” with golden hair from another world who helped Cremalton unite the islands. But it didn’t say how they had helped, or what happened to them after. They seemed little more than a footnote in the history of the empire. She couldn’t even be sure those golden-haired people were connected to the Jackal Lords or the people of the Southern Isles.
She knew there might be information about the origin of the Jackal Lords at the library on Stonepeak, but that was the last place in the empire she wanted to go right now. Progul Bon had claimed that Red was “so changed” that she wouldn’t be able to recognize him. Since biomancers didn’t lie she knew that his words were true. After losing Filler, Sadie, and, in a manner of speaking, Nettles, she didn’t think she could endure seeing Red so perverted by biomancery.
It was cowardly, of course. To avoid facing the evidence that she had failed Red. But if her other recent failures had taught her nothing else, it was to know her limits, emotional as well as physical. And while the Jackal Lord’s claim of kinship had troubled her, it hadn’t seemed so pressing that it warranted a voyage across the entire empire to the one island she dreaded to visit.
But the evidence she found in Shamka’s hut brought new urgency to the idea. The sickle looked like the one held by Vikma Bruea when he slit the throats of those innocent girls on Dawn’s Light, and the more she examined the wooden mask, the more it seemed apparent to her that it was a jackal.
Perhaps libraries weren’t the place to look. After all, the people of the Southern Isles were mostly illiterate. Maybe instead she needed to talk to her kinsmen. So rather than return to Galemoor, she continued east to the neighboring island of Gull’s Cry.
It was summer, so the ice was broken up enough for her to reach the island within a few days. She tied up her boat at the small dock and walked the short way to the village. She felt like she was in a dream as she looked around, because it was almost exactly like her own village, except alive. People wore the plain, rough cloth she remembered so clearly from her childhood. Many of them worked next to their mud and stone huts, smoking fish or boiling strips of whale blubber for oil.
People looked at her with their guarded blue or green eyes. Their faces were etched with the hard life of the Southern Isles, made all the more prominent by the gray sand that found its way into every line and crevice of their pale faces. While she looked like one of them in some ways, her black robe and mechanical hand clearly set her apart. Moreover, in a village this small, it would be unusual to see anyone you hadn’t grown up with.
She stopped in front of a hut where an older woman sat in the open doorway mending a fishing net.
“Excuse me. My name is Hope. May I ask where I can find your elder?”
The woman looked up at her with rheumy eyes, her fingers never stopping their work. “That’ll be Maltch, young miss. What do you need with him?”
“I’m from the next island over,” said Hope. “And I wanted to ask him a question about the history of our people.”
“Next island over, eh?” Her old fingers continued their work, surprisingly nimble considering how knotted they looked. Her expression gave nothing away. “In which direction?”
“West of here.”
“That so?” She looked back down at her work, her expression still unchanging. After a moment she said, “I reckon you ain’t got your own elder to ask anymore, then.”
“No,” agreed Hope. “I don’t.”
“Didn’t think there were any survivors.”
“Just me,” said Hope.
The woman continued to work in silence for a few moments. “Maltch is down the way. Third to last on the right. Can’t miss it. Biggest home in Gull’s Cry.”
“Thank you.” Hope turned and began walking in the direction the woman had indicated.
“Used to see the folk of Bleak Hope once a year,” called the woman.
Hope paused and turned back to her.
The woman’s face was slightly more creased than before as she examined her work. “We’d hold a festival at the end of the summer before the waters got impassable, the two villages coming together for one great big celebration.” She looked up at Hope, and maybe her expression softened just a little. “Your people are missed.”<
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The woman went back to her work, but Hope stood and watched her for a little while longer. In her head, the massacre of her village had always been something that had happened in isolation. Something no one else had noticed or cared about. The idea that the people of her humble village had been missed, even just by the people of the neighboring humble village, had never crossed her mind before. Now the notion of it left her stunned and oddly grateful. It was several minutes before she finally turned and continued on to Maltch’s home.
This elder’s house was much like Shamka’s, with far more stone than mud, and a roof that clearly wouldn’t leak even in the harshest weather. She knocked on the thick door with her clamp, realizing belatedly that the sound of metal striking wood might sound alarming to the inhabitant.
It took a few moments, but the door slowly opened, and an old man eyed her warily.
“I come from the village of Bleak Hope, and I have a question about the history of our people.”
He looked at her awhile, as if he was taking in what she said and what she looked like, trying to find some way for it all to make sense. He stared longest at the metal clamp she had for a hand.
Finally, he said, “Bleak Hope, huh?”
“Yes.”
“What you been doing all this time?”
“Surviving.”
The loose, wrinkled skin on the corners of his mouth and eyes creased into something that might have been a smile. “What’s your question?”
She pulled the makeshift sling bag from her shoulder and opened it to show him the sickle and mask.
“What are these?”
He stared at those two items even longer than he had stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “The only person I can tell is the one taking my place. Nobody else. Not even if they’re from Bleak Hope.”
Now it was her turn to stare at him. He hadn’t even tried to feign ignorance. He knew something. She was certain she could force it out of him. The impulse was there. A blade to his throat would get him to talk quickly enough. Or merely slam him against the door frame a few times.
But that was not how she wanted to do things anymore.
“I thought we were a simple people, without secrets or pretensions,” she said.
His eyes stayed on hers, unflinching and cold. “That what you thought?”
She tried a different tack. “I have some gold …” She reached for the pouch at her waist.
“And what do you expect someone would do with imperial coins way down here?”
His voice dripped with scorn, and rightfully so. Hope should have known better. This wasn’t downtown New Laven, after all. People around here bartered and traded. Money wasn’t any use in the Southern Isles.
“Sorry …,” she said awkwardly. “I’m just—”
“I don’t know what you’ve had to do to survive the fate of your island. I expect it wasn’t pleasant,” he said. “But that don’t give you special rights. We all suffer. That’s just how it is. Now you best go on back to wherever you came from.”
He turned and began closing the door.
Again the impulse toward violence surged through her. One quick blow to the stomach would make him much more pliable. But she swallowed her anger and impatience. Instead she asked, “Is the answer so shameful?”
He stopped in the doorway, his back to her. He didn’t respond except to take a slow breath. The wet, gurgling sound made Hope wonder how much time he had left, and if he’d found his successor yet. Someone to burden with whatever this terrible knowledge was.
“I’ll tell you this,” he said finally. “You might find what you’re looking for on Height of Lay.”
“Height of Lay?” That was the name of the island Vikma Bruea had told her the Jackal Lords had been exiled.
“Head east from here,” said Maltch. “When you get to an island with nothing to the south but ice, and nothing to the east but water, you’re there.”
“What will I find?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe more than you wanted. Either way, you best get going. Summer’s almost over, and once the dark season sets in, nobody gets on or off that godforsaken place.” He glanced back over his shoulder and eyed the sickle and mask in her sling bag. “And cover those up. Show them to no one else on this island. Understand?”
Hope nodded wordlessly. She understood one thing, at least. It was that shameful.
Height of Lay was the most inhospitable island Hope had ever seen. It looked like a small mountain range rising up from the water. She couldn’t see any level terrain. The only foliage appeared to be the coarse brambles that clung stubbornly to the rocks. How could anyone live there?
She found a tiny spit of gray beach for her boat. Then she looked for the shortest peak, and began her ascent. She climbed without stopping that whole day, but her clamp slowed her down, so she was only halfway up by sunset. She rested that night on a small bit of cold rock that jutted out from the cliff.
When she woke the next morning, her black robes were covered with frost. Her limbs were stiff when she started to climb again, but they loosened as the exertion warmed her. She reached the snow line near midday, and shortly after that reached the summit. Taller peaks continued to stretch up on either side, but now she could see that there was a valley in the center of the island that cut nearly down to sea level. The valley was sheltered from the wind, but open to the sun. As she began her descent, the air warmed noticeably.
The valley floor was thick with dark green vegetation. She scanned for any sign of habitation as she waded through the knee-high grass. There was a simple beauty to the valley, with yellow, purple, and white wildflowers sprouting from small trees, and hard red berries glistening on bushes. Hope suspected that in the winter, it was just as harsh and unforgiving as the rest of the Southern Isles, but here in the summer months, it seemed like a hidden paradise. If this was where the Jackal Lords had been exiled, they could have been sent to worse places.
After walking for about an hour, she saw a large cave opening in the cliff face along the eastern boundary of the valley. The same unfamiliar letters that were on the sickle had been carved into the rock around the cave entrance. That might have captured her attention, except there was something even more interesting underneath.
Or rather, someone.
A boy of about five or six sat in the grass in front of the cave entrance. His bare, pale legs stuck out beneath a rough gray smock as he sat cross-legged. His feet were covered by thick black boots that seemed almost comically large for him. His shaggy hair was an eerie bone white, paler even than the typical blond hair of someone from the Southern Isles. His head was bowed, so she couldn’t see his face. He held something small and dark in his lap, and he hummed to himself in a cheerful but somehow disconcerting voice.
Hope approached slowly so as not to alarm the boy. As she got closer, she noticed that the object in the boy’s lap was a dead bird. She also caught a glint of metal in the grass next to him, perhaps a knife or other hunting tool.
She had assumed the bird was dead because it had been so still in his hands. But suddenly it began to move. The boy laughed delightedly as he released it up into the sky. He leaned back on his hands and smiled up at the bird as it circled overhead. Strangely, the bird only continued to fly around in a circle, its head tilted at an unnatural angle.
“Who are you?” the boy asked in a chirping voice. There was a feral, almost deranged quality in the way he grinned fixedly at her. Now that she was closer, she saw that his bare arms and legs were covered in thin pink scars, as if he had been cut countless times. Perhaps by Vikma Bruea? Was this the Jackal Lord’s son, or a victim of his cruelty?
She drew back her hood and regarded him for a moment. “You can call me Hope, if you like.”
He pointed a finger at her. “You are a girl!”
She nodded.
He kept his finger pointed at her. “Then you are not my lord. He is a boy.” He seemed very pleased with his deduction
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“What’s your name?” she asked as she stepped closer.
“I am called Uter.” Then his expression became pleading. “Will you be my friend?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Hooray!”
With unexpected speed, he grabbed the blade that lay in the grass next to him. It looked like the same small sickle she’d seen before. Still smiling, he lunged forward and took a swipe at her throat. She leaned back, avoiding the curved edge.
For a moment, he looked surprised that she’d avoided his attack. Then his face curled into a pout.
“I thought you were going to be my friend!” He came at her with a rapid series of swings, the blade hissing in the cold air.
“I never promised I would.” She calmly dodged each slash but did not retaliate. “And anyway, how can we be friends if I’m dead?”
“Silly, that’s how we become friends.”
She continued to avoid his attacks as she thought about that for a moment. “What if I know a better way to be friends?”
He abruptly stopped. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What better way?”
“Why don’t you explain the way you know, and I’ll explain the way I know, and then we’ll decide together which is better.”
His manic grin returned. “Like a contest?”
“Sure,” agreed Hope.
“Okay, great!” He plopped back down on the ground, his big boots splayed out in front of him as he negligently dropped his sickle back in the grass. “My way is to kill them, then bring them back to life. When I do that, they always do what I say.”
Hope looked up at the bird wheeling overhead. “Is that what you did with the bird?”
“You bet!” He lay back into the grass, stretching out his arms and legs, and stared up at the bird.
“It certainly seems effective,” admitted Hope.
“So I win?” He reached for his sickle.
“You have to listen to my way first.”
“Right!” He dropped his sickle back into the grass, rolled onto his stomach, and stared up at her, propping his chin up with his hands. “Your turn!”
