The Boneless Mercies

by April Genevieve Tucholke

“Siggy used to say I was a Lion-child and roaring was in my blood.”

  Trigve smiled. “Your old Mercy mentor was right.” He reached up and started loosening my hair from its thick silver braid.

  I’d kept my hair tied back ever since I walked away from a Mercy-kill with the ends of my locks dripping blood. But Trigve always freed his hair at night—he said he liked to feel the wind on it.

  “Which one of your parents gave you this?”

  “My father was a typical blond Vorse, but my mother was born into a family of nomadic Relic Hunters from Finnmark. She was my age when their band went south on the hunt for ancient artifacts. She met my father at a Night Market, fell in love, and stayed behind.” I leaned my head back, into Trigve’s hand. “She gave me her looks, and her height, and her hair the color of the winter moon.”

  My mother never spoke of her days with the Hunters, and my father never asked. I’d long wished I knew something about her family. Perhaps I even had kin in Finnmark. It was something I dwelled on late at night.

  “Trigve?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to leave us, now that winter is drawing near? Wouldn’t you prefer a settled life of honorable trade in some Vorse village, a warm roof over your head during the long, cold nights?” I paused. “If you’re planning to go soon, tell me straight. Don’t linger over it.”

  Trigve stared at the fire, and didn’t answer.

  Young men were often taken into service at the Great Halls. Or they could seek apprenticeships with a village tradesman, like the blacksmith, if they looked strong enough—which Trigve did, now that he’d been eating his fill of roast rabbit every night.

  Every morning I waited for Trigve to wake up, turn to me, and say he was leaving. Men didn’t travel with Mercies. It made them uncomfortable, the way we killed: no glory, nothing conquered, no riches, just quiet and swift, take the few coins, and leave. But the weeks passed, and Trigve didn’t move on. He never even mentioned it.

  “You gave him his life-spark back,” Juniper said to me, not long after Trigve had joined us. She pressed her palms together and blew over her right shoulder, lips pursed, in the way of the witches when they set a wish out on the air. “And it’s a good thing he’s with us. The wind whispers a story to me of four girls and one dark-haired boy.”

  The fire popped and crackled as a log crumbled into ash. I leaned my shoulder into Trigve’s, and shifted closer into his side.

  His green eyes fell on me. “Do you want me to leave, Frey?”

  “No,” I said, quickly. “Never. But men don’t travel with the Mercies, not for long. Some Mercies take lovers for a while—it is always temporary. The other girls have said nothing about your coming with us, but this can’t last forever. I know it can’t.”

  My voice had gotten louder as I talked, enough to make Juniper shift in her sleep and Ovie open that one blue eye of hers. She glanced over at Trigve, then back to me, and then shut her eye again.

  Trigve took a breath and let it out slowly. He spread his palm across the back of my neck, then wove his fingers into the roots of my hair and gave it a gentle tug. “Remember that day last winter when you found me in the snow?”

  FIVE

  The first time I saw Trigve Lothe, he was sitting in the snow, next to a dead horse, on the outskirts of a dead village.

  The snow sickness struck some poor town or two each year, killing humans and animals both. It would appear soon after a snowfall, sweep through, and then vanish until the next year, the next village, the next snow. Some lived, most died.

  People liked to whisper that the snow sickness was a curse from the Sea Witches, but that’s as far as they went. They might burn witches in other places, but not in Vorseland.

  We had been on our way to the town of Kragen, following a rumor. A serving girl at the Crossroads Inn told us of an old, rich widower who had married a young, beautiful girl a few years past. Now he was ailing, and had been for months. We were going to present ourselves to the fair bride and see if she took the bait. We didn’t usually go searching for customers, but the winter had been long—it had taken many people who should have been ours.

  We had planned to cross through the village of Dorrit and stop at the tavern, giving us a chance to fill our bellies and get warm by the fire. Snow had come in the night, and we were cold to the bone.

  “Something’s wrong,” Ovie said when we were still several yards from the edge of the town.

  I nodded. “Everything is too quiet. Too still.”

  I slowed my steps, and the rest followed.

  We reached the short, three-foot stone wall that surrounded the huts in a lopsided circle, and the four of us simply stood there, gazing across the white drifts, wondering whether we should enter.

  Dorrit was a place like any other. It consisted of a dozen arched huts, covered in thatch. Round wooden shields were the only spark of color to break up the long stretch of white—the shields were a remembrance of the dead, and they hung on the sides of most Vorse homes, red, blue, white, green, black. I spotted the graceful curves of an abandoned longboat poking out of the snow—each village in Vorseland used to build and maintain its own ship, which the men would then use during the raiding season in spring. They would drag their boats to the broad Black Knife River, thick ropes taut against strong backs, and from there they would sail to the Quell Sea. But the golden age of the Red Sky Raids had ended thirty years ago, and most ships were like this now, unused and rotting.

  The snow had stopped falling, which meant the sickness was past. Still, we hesitated, watching for signs of life and pointing out the bodies of the dead.

  The corpse of a young man, crumpled on the ground near a tall, simple statue of the battle god, Nor.

  An older woman with a frozen infant in her arms, slouched in the snow with her back to a juniper tree.

  A girl, collapsed by the well, curled into a fetal position. The snow was blinding under the morning sun, and at first I’d taken her for a shadow. But a cloud came up, and I saw her clearly, red hair bright against the fresh white flakes.

  The Sea Witch touched the tips of her fingers to her lips, then heart. “I wish them all a quick journey to Holhalla.”

  A dog’s howl broke the silence, and I flinched.

  Runa turned and glanced at me over her shoulder. “This is an opportunity, Frey.”

  By this she meant that she wanted to ransack some of the houses for food and coin. The quiet homes, where everyone had died.

  For all that I dealt in death, I had no desire to go among the dead, to see the victims blue with frost, expressions of pain frozen on their faces. Besides, it was the right of the Gothi nuns to go through and take what was left after they burned the dead. That was how it was done.

  Runa scanned the horizon, hand to her forehead. “It won’t take long. I can have this town searched before noon.”

  I opened my mouth, ready to argue—

  And caught a flicker of movement off to the right, a bit of dark shifting in the white snow.

  A young man was sitting at the far end of the village near a turned-over caravan, his back against a dead Iber horse. And he was alive.

  A wind gusted through the trees, shaking the nearby pine needles in an eerie, omniscient way. It had been a calm morning up until then, no breeze, complete stillness. I heard Juniper draw in her breath—rogue winds were a sign that the gods were watching, according to the Sea Witches.

  I went over to the man and knelt. He was young. My age, maybe. He had long hair, tied back, and ink-stained fingertips.

  “You live,” I said.

  “Yes,” he answered, not looking at me.

  “I’m Frey.” I pulled off a thick wool glove and pressed my bare palm to his cheek. It was icy cold.

  “I’m Trigve Lothe.” His eyes met mine now, and they were green, green like unripe juniper berries rolled between your hands until they shine. He didn’t flinch at the sight of a Boneless Mercy, didn’t jerk away from my touch.


  I stood, and he stood, too, slowly, his limbs frozen and stiff. Snow fell from his body and drifted to the ground. He pounded his fists on his thighs to bring the blood back, then glanced over my shoulder at the other Mercies. “Where are you headed?”

  “Anywhere,” I said. “Everywhere.”

  “Can I join you?”

  I didn’t bother to ask the other Mercies. Runa would say no and Juniper would say yes and Ovie would say nothing at all.

  “You can,” I replied.

  He nodded, then walked around to the other side of the caravan. He yanked on the door. It swung open and hit a pile of snow. I put my hands on my knees, crouched down, and looked inside. I saw velvet cushions and carved wooden panels. I saw a man in a red cloak, face contorted, limbs twisted.

  Trigve dropped to his knees and crawled over the dead man, into the capsized caravan. When he came back out, he was holding a leather satchel and a thick wolf pelt. He threw the satchel over one shoulder, and the pelt over the other.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

  Trigve followed us to the edge of the Seeth Forest, one mile, almost two, across snowy, raven-filled meadows, the road dipping down into a gully, back up again, northern spruce spreading out before us like a dark green ocean. We reached the large, thick-timbered home of the young wife with the rich, ailing husband. Trigve said nothing when I knocked, and she let us in. Said nothing when she looked at our black Mercy-cloaks and flinched. Said nothing when she showed us through the Great Hall, past two wide-eyed servants, up a flight of stairs to her husband’s bed.

  The young wife was beautiful, as the girl at the inn had said. Soft curves, deep brown eyes, full cheeks, lustrous brown hair. She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and his eyes opened.

  The man’s face was pinched with pain, but he was handsome still, despite his age. Thick beard, dark eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment, and I could see then that she loved him. This was a true Mercy-kill.

  “Poison,” she whispered.

  I pulled the vial of blue liquid from the leather pouch at my waist and held it up. She nodded, one jerk of her chin. We didn’t use Blue Seed often. It was expensive, whereas Ovie’s steel was cheap.

  When Ovie realized she wasn’t needed, she turned and left without a word. Runa edged back into the corner shadows to watch. Juniper went to the bride, took her hand, stood on tiptoe, and whispered a witch prayer in her ear.

  Trigve went to the bed. He slid his arm underneath the man’s back, helped him rise into a sitting position, and then nodded at me as if he’d always done this, as if he’d never done anything else.

  The man reached a shriveled arm out and took the vial from me. He drank it in one quick toss, head back, eyes closed. And in that gesture, I saw the man he’d been. I saw battles fought and won. I saw feasts in front of fires. I saw tender nights under furs, silken girls at his side. I saw laughter and anger and lust and grief and glory.

  I saw the life I wanted.

  Afterward, Juniper prayed over the body, her small arms sweeping up and down the bed, preparing the man’s spirit for Holhalla.

  The wife paid us well, and we bought ourselves a room at a nearby inn that night. We had venison and bread in front of a bright fire. Trigve ate and ate and ate, and then we all got drunk on Cloudberry Mead. Later we crawled up the rickety stairs and stumbled into our room. Runa curled up by herself in the corner, which left three Mercies and one bed. We tucked ourselves in and squeezed, tiny Juniper in the middle.

  Trigve threw his wolf fur down on the floor by my side of the bed. And later, when we both lay awake, chasing sleep, he reached his hand up, and I took it in mine.

  * * *

  “Yes, Trigve,” I said. “I remember that day in Dorrit.”

  “Would you like to know how I ended up there?”

  I nodded.

  “It involves a girl.”

  “Ah. What was her name?”

  “Lilas.”

  “Go on,” I replied a few moments later, when he stayed quiet.

  Trigve’s eyes met mine. “Lilas was sixteen when her parents were drowned on the Quell Sea during a winter storm. She gathered all the coin her parents had saved and made her way across the islands. She made a donation to Obin and entered a convent in Stroth. Lilas began training in the way of the Gothi nuns and was content. Until Jarl Keld caught a glimpse of her during a solstice ritual.

  “Keld bought her life a few months later. The Gothi soothsayer I was apprenticed to—a man named Lars—was sent to fetch the girl and bring her to the temple so her life could be offered to the god Forset at dawn. So we fetched her.”

  “I hate these Gothi sacrifices,” I said loudly. Juniper stirred in her sleep again.

  Trigve sighed. “Yes. Lilas was a pawn for jarls and mystics, her life worth less than a prayer. But these sacrifices are the old way. They will not last much longer.”

  “What happened?” I knew this story would not end well.

  “Lilas traveled with us for seven days, and we grew close. She was passionate and bright and full of life.” He paused. “Lars had been bartering prayers for goods on our journey, and one day a farmer gave him a home-brewed bottle of apple Vite. That night, Lars got drunk. He was a violent drinker, and we left him alone to sleep it off. Lilas and I wandered into the village.”

  Trigve looked away, toward the fire, the shadows cutting across his face. I turned and kicked another log into the flames.

  “We spent the night together in a bed at the inn, Frey.”

  I raised my eyebrows. The nuns for the Gothi sacrifices need to be untouched by man, and the world, or the god will reject the prayer and bring misfortune. Everyone knew this.

  “Lars beat me when we returned to the caravan, but he beat her worse.” Trigve reached toward me again, fingers sliding through my silver hair. “He kicked her in the ribs as she crouched between the soothsayer’s bed and a small wooden table. I put my hand around his red fleshy neck and strangled him with his own leather belt. The caravan was too small for him to turn around, to throw me off. He fell to his knees, and I fell with him.”

  Trigve paused. “Afterward, we went back to the inn and planned our future. We were going to head south—I wanted to study with the Orate Healers on the island of Santor, and she wanted a little farm by the sea.

  “I woke up that night with Lilas sweating in my arms. The snow sickness came and went. She died. I placed her by a group of yew trees on the other side of the village, where the Gothi nuns would find her. When I returned to the caravan, it was overturned, the horse dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Trigve,” I said. Compassion is best when given straight and simple.

  He rubbed his hand along his jaw, where a dark stubble was setting in. “The punishment for killing a soothsayer is vivisepulture, which means I would have been buried alive if caught. The snow sickness hid my crime, for the nuns don’t speak, and everyone else in the village was either dead or grieving. Yet I felt no relief at my narrow escape. I felt nothing. Hours passed, and I didn’t move. I was slowly freezing to death.”

  “Why did you just stay there, among all the dead?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have it in me to move on. I couldn’t find the will to make a choice, to get up, to leave.”

  He wasn’t ashamed, saying this.

  The woman in black silk had been filled with this lethargy, too. Juniper called such people life-cold and said their spark was buried deep in snow that never melted.

  “You brought me back,” Trigve said. “I had nothing … And then suddenly you were there.”

  I was quiet for a while, thinking on his story. I pushed another log into the fire with the toe of my boot, nuzzling it into the embers. “Trigve?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think it is, this beast?”

  He ran his thumb over an old bloodstain on the side of my brown tunic. “Perhaps it’s a Giantine Wolf come down from the far north.”


  “Aren’t the Giantine Wolves ignored in the Anglon Mystic books, along with trolls?”

  The corners of Trigve’s eyes creased, and he smiled. “A few of the wolves are supposed to be left, up in the Wild Ice Plains and the Faroe Glaciers. It’s possible that a lone wolf began ranging south and started terrorizing Blue Vee. It could have caught a tundra virus and gone rabid. It hasn’t happened in three hundred years or so, but it’s possible.”

  I thought about this for a moment, and then shook my head. “Wolves, even rabid Giantine Wolves … They are predictable. They have patterns. This beast feels different. Juniper would say that my heart is trying to tell me something and that I should listen to the beats. These regular attacks on Roth’s villages feel like … vengeance.”

  I ran my fingertips over the tender slice across my left palm. I pressed in until I felt a sharp ache shoot down my wrist.

  My band of Boneless Mercies might defeat an animal, no matter how big or rabid, but revenge belonged to something more … human.

  “Juniper would not have agreed to go unless she also believed we had a fighting chance.”

  Trigve nodded. “True.”

  I turned to him and put my hands on his arms, my thumbs in the hollows of his inner elbows. “If we die in Blue Vee, then it will be a good death—a warrior’s death. It is every Vorse warrior’s wish to die with a blade in hand. It is my wish, as well.”

  We fell asleep that night, bodies wrapped together. Juniper and Ovie had to nestle into each other, instead of me.

  * * *

  I woke at dawn, the sunrise tickling my skin. I whispered Trigve’s name. His eyelids fluttered, but he kept sleeping. Ovie smelled of snow, but Trigve smelled faintly of sweet green herbs. I breathed in, long and slow, then yawned and watched the orange-and-pink-smudged sky.

  I was seventeen.

  I would not die like my parents, and like Lilas, shivering and sweating in some godforsaken Vorse village. I would not have my corpse found by Gothi nuns and burned by strangers.

  I would try my hand at greatness, and see where it led.

  Glory.

  I wanted to touch it. Taste it. I wanted it so deeply I thought my heart would swell up, claw its way out of me, and float away on the wind, cawing like a Sea Witch raven, a prayer caught in its beak.