The Boneless Mercies

by April Genevieve Tucholke

  I stretched my arm over Ovie, searching in the dark for Trigve’s warm fingers. I squeezed his hand. Sleep often shunned him, like me.

  When I finally did drift off, my dreams were turbulent. Wolves howling into crisp winter air. White, sinuous moonlight on a black field. Oily red blood spilling across gray stone.

  THREE

  We walked slowly through the village of Hail the next morning, to let them see us, the people with death on their minds. It was market day, and busy, but the villagers parted to let us through. None made eye contact—no one wanted to be seen trying to catch the attention of a Boneless Mercy. They gave us a wide berth, so the edges of our cloaks wouldn’t graze them as we passed.

  People knew us by our Mercy-cloaks—tightly-knit wool, dyed black and embroidered with raven feathers. Ours glistened with the golden linseed oil we rubbed into the cloth to keep out the rain and snow.

  A girl couldn’t take on or carry out Mercy-work in Vorseland unless she wore a Mercy-cloak. Doing so could invoke the wrath of an overly zealous jarl—otherwise, anyone could buy a small, Mercy-size dagger from a village market and simply start trading in death. The cloaks were trickier. I’d had our four commissioned two years ago from a tailor’s daughter who wanted us to kill her father—he drank too much, beat her, and who knew what else. Runa said it was a vengeance kill, not a Mercy-kill, and hence not our business. Ovie said it would mean trouble if it was found out. But I didn’t care. I saw the girl’s bruises, deep purple across her cheek. I knifed her father as he pissed that night outside the tavern, a harsh slash to the gut. He writhed on the ground in the mud, blood pouring.

  That daughter-beater screamed his way into a slow, painful death, and I was glad of it.

  Siggy used to say that Mercies shouldn’t enjoy killing. But the daughter-beaters, the wife-beaters, the ones who were cruel to animals, the ones who were brutal and selfish and hard … I liked killing them. I took pleasure in it.

  Eventually we drifted into the Hail Inn—roaring hearth fire, sturdy wooden tables, cheery, bearded barkeep who didn’t care a bit about our Mercy-cloaks after he saw our coin. I ordered beef stew and bread and a pint of dark ale for each of us. We found a table in a dark corner away from the fire, Runa and Juniper on one side, me between Trigve and Ovie on the other. A skinny serving girl brought us steaming bowls and bubbling mugs, and I was in high spirits, grateful to be someplace warm and lively, grateful not to be eating on the cold ground again.

  Runa did not share my good humor. She ate three bites of her stew, then set her spoon down with a thud. “I’m done with Mercy-killing.”

  This was an old argument. One we’d been having since the day Siggy died. There was no penalty for quitting the death trade—we didn’t pledge ourselves to a jarl like Vorse warriors. Mercies were more like the hedge-fighters of Elshland—wandering mercenaries who took work when they could find it and slept under a hedge when they couldn’t. We lived without the comfort of a jarl’s Great Hall and the food and shelter it provided … But we were free to come and go as we pleased, which had its advantages.

  Ovie, for her part, didn’t mind the death trade, though I knew she wanted to travel to distant lands and see the world. Runa didn’t mind the endless wandering but hated bringing death. Juniper ached to stand still—she’d been raised by the Sea Witches in a cove by the Quell Sea and knew what it meant to have a home and a family.

  None of us was content.

  Occasionally I wished my parents had left me some small, isolated parcel of land at the far end of some quiet jarldom. As a farmer, I could have done as I pleased, more than most, at least. I’d be at the mercy of no one but nature and the gods.

  I’d seen the occasional Vorse female farmer in our wanderings. She tilled the earth, cultivated it, harvested it, season after season, year after year. I imagined it was a hard life, filled with harsh sun in the summer and freezing wind in the winter. And farm-women often looked half-starved and weary beyond reason. But I would have taken that life in a heartbeat over being a Mercy.

  No, that was a lie.

  I would have stuck it out as a farmer for one season, possibly two, and then sold the steading. I was a wanderer through and through. Siggy saw it in me from the first, and she was right. I would never choose to sink my youth into the dirt, my back growing bent, my skin turning rough. I wanted more than this. A lot more.

  “I’m done with Mercy-killing,” Runa said again, louder this time.

  I looked at her. “Once a Mercy, always a Mercy.” It was something Siggy used to say whenever I asked her if she’d ever thought of leaving the death trade. “We’ve seen too much death not to carry it always in our hearts, whether or not we wear the raven cloaks.”

  Runa slammed her fist on the table, and ale sloshed over the rims of our cups. “And if we joined the Quicks, they’d say, ‘Once a Quick, always a Quick.’ Wouldn’t you rather this be true?”

  “Runa.” Ovie’s voice was soft but deep, her eyes narrow. “Don’t.”

  Runa blinked and started in anyway. “I want to do something else. Anything else. Let’s join the Quicks.”

  The Quicks moved through the Seven Endless Forests, living off the land. They were single-minded and focused when hunting but jovial and carefree at night beside the flames. We’d stumbled upon our fair share of Quick bands in our travels across the Vorseland Borders, following the death trade. They often let us share their fire.

  Boneless Mercies were required by Vorse law to keep their hair long—it was the standard code for us death-bringers, as important as our cloaks. But the Quicks cut their hair short to keep it out of their way, to stay silent, to stay quick. It was said they were blessed by the gods, and jarls believed they brought luck to any forest they wandered.

  Many jarls were also required by ancient Vorse law to pay the Quicks a sizable amount of gold to keep their forests free of thieves and brigands, an easy feat for the skilled archers. This gold allowed the Quicks to purchase sturdy boots and well-made cloaks. It allowed them to maintain a series of secret, well-stocked shelters across Vorseland, from caves to tree huts to camouflaged longhouses deep in the forest, invisible except for the thin plume of smoke rising from the roof.

  I pushed my bowl away and rested my chin on my hand. “We’ve been over this, Runa. The Quicks will not take us in. I’ve asked each band we’ve come across, and they’ve all turned me down, every one. They want carefree wanderers, slow to anger, quick to laugh. They want skilled archers, silent on the hunt but loud and boisterous at night beside the fire. And we are death-traders.”

  Runa shrugged. “We will learn. They can teach us.”

  “And why would they bother?”

  Juniper’s gray eyes shifted from me to Runa and back again. She kept a handful of small seashells in a pocket of her tunic, plucked from the shores of the Merrows, and she began to fiddle with them. She did this whenever she was worried. I heard them softly clinking under the table.

  Runa closed her eyes and sighed. “Then let’s just form our own woodland band. We can head into the nearest Endless Forest and never leave.”

  I shook my head. “The Quicks have gold, and shelter—they can weather the worst of the winter storms in relative comfort. What would we do when a snowstorm hits, and we have no secret shelters and no coin?”

  Runa took a sip of her ale, and then wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve. “Fine. Then let’s join the Sea Witches.”

  Juniper looked over her shoulder at Runa. “You can’t. I’ve told you this already. The Sea Witches won’t take in outsiders. Mother Hush wouldn’t even let me adopt a stray dog once because he wasn’t born on the Merrow shores. Though in the end, I kept him anyway. I fed him fresh fish and sang him the dog-prayers…”

  “Is that why they exiled you?” Runa’s anger had switched in a heartbeat from me to Juniper.

  “They didn’t exile me.”

  “Then why are you here with us? The Sea Witches protect their own—you must have done something truly
terrible for them to banish you.”

  I set my mug down. “Back off, Runa.”

  Next to me, Ovie finished her ale in one long swallow. Quickly, silently, she pulled out her dagger, reached across the table, and put it to Runa’s throat. “Leave Juniper alone. She’s a right to her secrets, just like all of us.”

  Trigve opened his mouth to protest, but I put my hand on his arm to keep him still. I wanted to let this play out.

  “I don’t have any secrets,” Runa hissed, her eyes meeting Ovie’s over the blade.

  “We all have secrets,” Juniper whispered.

  “Yes.” Ovie pulled her blade away again, leaving a thin line of blood on Runa’s throat.

  Most Vorse preferred not to speak about their past. They thought it unlucky. Often when a character in a saga spoke of their childhood, it meant they hadn’t long to live.

  Besides, Siggy used to say, the path to the death trade was paved with sorrow, and sad stories are best left alone. So we didn’t pry, even Runa … until now.

  Runa wiped the blood from her neck with a flick of her thumb. Ovie was the only thing in the world that seemed to scare her. Still, her fire had only been tamed, not put out. She leaned back and crossed her arms. “So we can’t join the Sea Witches. Then how about we take up with the Gothi nuns?”

  I shook my head. “The nuns can’t enter the convent without a large donation to their god, Obin. Besides, they deal in the death trade even more than us. I can’t see you washing dead bodies and preparing them for burning, Runa. And what if some jarl wants to make a vestal sacrifice to Forset, and the nuns send you? What then?”

  Runa didn’t answer. There was a long pause among us, our table cloaked in stillness, surrounded by the hum of the bustling inn. Juniper fidgeted. Trigve’s foot brushed against mine. Ovie was silent, simply waiting to see what I’d do next.

  Runa’s gaze met mine. “Well, what would you suggest then, Frey? If you don’t like any of my ideas, then why don’t you come up with one of your own? I know you hate Mercy-killing as much as I do.”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms, just as she had, and said a silent prayer to Valkree to send me a new idea, an alternative path.

  The front of the inn began to stir. A tall man with long red hair had risen from his table and now stood near the fire, telling a story. It was too loud to make out his words, but eventually the room began to hush. Spoons rested quietly in bowls, bodies went still, all eyes turned to the tale-teller.

  He was telling a story about the Blue Vee Beast.

  I’d heard of the beast. We all had. Rumors of blood, darkness, death. A creature that came in the night and slaughtered whole villages in Blue Vee. Men, women, children. A few weeks of quiet would pass, a month … And then the butchery began again. Some said the creature ate the corpses, and some said it dragged them away to its den, and some said it took only the girls, and some said it took only the boys, and some said it took only the heads and used them in dark snow-magic rituals.

  “… and in the morning they found the bodies, headless, lifeless, strung up in the trees by their feet, the youngest still a babe. Roth’s men had them taken down and burned, but the village is a haunted place now, and the ghosts of the dead roam after nightfall.” The red-haired man’s voice soared across the inn. “Jarl Roth is offering a hundred gold klines to anyone who can defeat this beast, but who here will swear him their blade?”

  Roth was the jarl of Blue Vee, and half his warriors had been slain fighting this beast. He’d called in aid from neighboring jarldoms, but few answered. It was a difficult place to reach on foot—one had to cross the dangerous, fetid Red Willow Marsh or take the narrow Ribbon Pass over the Skal Mountains. The Jade Fells lived along the Ribbon Pass, and they were a wild people from the far north, brutal and fearless. It was said they ate the hearts of their dead.

  A person could sail up the coast and avoid these dangers, but raiding longboats required two dozen strong men at the oars, and only jarls could afford their own single-mast, clinker-built vessels. Enough gold could book a person passage on the rare merchant ship that landed on the Blue Vee coast, but if any of us were that wealthy, we wouldn’t risk our lives trying to slay a monster.

  The people near us began to whisper. They called Blue Vee a cursed place and speculated on what would happen if no one was able to kill the beast. Would it go back to the far north and leave the rest of Vorseland alone? Or would it move farther south?

  The red-haired man raised a fist in the air, and the firelight glinted off the bronze band on his wrist. “Who here has the heart to seek out this monster and bring it down?” He pointed at a broad-shouldered man near the door. “Do you, blacksmith? Will you add your strength to Roth’s and put an end to this horror?”

  The blacksmith, a handsome, bearded man of around thirty, just shrugged.

  No one here would answer Roth’s call. I’d seen a similar scene play out a dozen times in various inns throughout the last few months.

  And yet …

  I looked each of the Mercies in the eye. “I say we turn west and try for the Blue Vee Beast. We hunt it down, fight it, slay it, and claim the reward.”

  Ovie said nothing. Juniper said nothing.

  “Blue Vee?” Runa rubbed her palm along her jaw and eyed me warily. “That’s your plan to get us out of Mercy-killing? We slay the sick and old, Frey, not bloodthirsty beasts. What makes you think us Mercies can kill this thing? A creature that trained warriors haven’t been able to destroy?”

  Even as she said it, I felt my heart beat faster, blood buzzing through my veins.

  I wanted to fight something that fought back.

  I wanted it more than I wanted a home and a family. I wanted it more than I wanted food and warmth and gold.

  My eyes met Runa’s. “Trained warriors kill loudly. We kill silently. And that is how you hunt a beast.”

  “Quiet. Both of you.” Ovie nodded toward a group of men in the opposite corner playing a dice game. “They’re listening.”

  We left the inn and napped off the stew and ale under a large oak tree at the edge of town, stretched out on grass that smelled clean and floral. I woke before the others and lay still, staring up, arms crossed under my head. The sky was stark blue, and it was one of those perfect, early-autumn evenings.

  But the oak’s leaves were beginning to change color. A sign of things to come.

  Winter.

  Short days, long nights. Little food. And the cold. Always, always the cold.

  Mercy-work was best done after the shadows set in. The people with death on their minds found us as the sun began to set.

  An old woman, stooped and twisted as a bone-white juniper tree. “Come to the house at the southern crossroads, the one with five windows. Bring poison. I can pay.”

  The blacksmith from the inn, dark eyes deep and melancholy. “Come to the smithy, climb the outside stairs, and knock twice. My grandmother is eager to see Holhalla.”

  A father, thin and weary, with forlorn brown eyes. “Come to the hut by the tall pine, straight north. Skin-eating disease.”

  And one last request, just as the fat orange sun sank below the sky. A girl, no older than twelve, with long black hair and green eyes.

  “I need a vial of Blue Seed.”

  “Why?” Runa asked. “We aren’t Potion Peddlers. We use poison, we don’t sell it.”

  Blue Seed poison was squeezed from the seeds of the Black Pine—it was hard to make and hard to get, but it brought a fast and painless death. A smaller dose would also empty a woman’s womb, if that was her wish—this was lawful in some jarldoms, but not all. Laws changed as often as jarls died and new rulers took their place. Young women sometimes approached us for “Small Seed,” as they called it, clutching their bellies, eyes afraid. I told them to seek the Potion Peddlers … but I also suggested they use Wild Carrot Oil in the future to prevent a similar event.

  The black-haired girl started shaking under Runa’s hard gaze, thin shoulders twitching in he
r black wool dress. “My father went off into the Red Willow Marsh and never came back. My mother took a new husband and he’s … He’s not kind to her or to me. I want him dead.”

  “That’s a vengeance kill, not a Mercy-kill.” Runa’s voice was a little softer now.

  Juniper walked forward and put her arm around the girl’s waist. She moved a strand of her hair and whispered a prayer in her ear.

  My eyes met Ovie’s. We’d done vengeance kills in the past. To get our Mercy-cloaks, yes, but it hadn’t stopped there. Vengeance kills were forbidden, and things would go badly for us if it was discovered. Still, they were far more satisfying than Mercy-kills.

  Ovie nodded. She agreed with me on this.

  I slipped my hand into my leather satchel, pulled out a vial filled with oily blue liquid, and gave it to the girl. “Take it,” I said. “And remember, our Sea Witch sees all and knows all. If I find out you used this potion on anyone other than your stepfather, we will track you down and send you straight to Hel. You are putting us all at risk. Understood?”

  She stared at me for a moment, nodded, then handed me two coins before running off into the night.

  The Potion Peddlers followed strict laws and never sold to children. Sometimes they wouldn’t even sell to us. Siggy never would have given the girl the poison.

  I wasn’t sure if this had made her a strong Boneless Mercy, or a weak one.

  * * *

  We went to the crossroads first, then the blacksmith’s. Old and sick. Simple tasks. We left the skin-eater job for last.

  The house was nothing but a stone hut, built next to the tangled roots of a tall, ancient pine tree, upper branches reaching out vast and strong over a small black lake. The thin man from earlier answered the door, bloodshot eyes, shaking hands.

  His wife had thick blond hair and small hands. Her skin was covered in weeping sores. She sighed when she saw us, whether with sadness or relief, I couldn’t tell. Her husband took her in his arms and held her. A few moments passed, and then he lifted her chin with his palm, exposing the red blisters on her ashen neck.