Scourge

by Gail Z. Martin

  “You think it’s true?”

  “What do I know? People say all kinds of things. Easier to blame witches than the gods. More to the point is what the guards believe. And I’ve heard there’ve been some accusations.”

  “Of witchcraft?”

  “Aye. There’ll be a hanging or two, mark my words.” “Any other news?”

  “Trania, the fortune teller, says the monsters will return within a fortnight; more this time, hungrier. And she says grief will come to witches and Wanderers.” He daubed the sweat dripping of his face with a filthy kerchief.

  “The monsters always come back sooner or later, so that’s a safe prediction for Trania, and that crazy prophet,” Kell said. “As for the witches and Wanderers, the guards are always causing problems for them. Maybe something worse this time?”

  “Can’t tell you more, boy. That’s all the lady said.” Widgem leaned back and grinned. “You’ll do good business selling those charms,” he said, patting his bag. “Just remember—I’m the one who risks going down in that vile place and dealing with those witches—and I always give you the best prices.” He hesitated. “About the fortune teller. I think she’s right this time—be careful.”

  “Yeah. Don’t worry. I know how to watch out for myself.”

  Kell wove back through the crowded inn. The cart sat right where he’d left it, and a quick glance assured him no one had pawed over the bodies looking for clothing to scavenge. A thin stream of blood still poured from the crushed man. Maybe that put off any robbers, Kell thought. He grabbed the cart’s shafts and headed back across town.

  Kell maneuvered the cart through two more blocks before he heard shouting. He left the cart against the side of an alley and carefully eased closer, staying against the wall to remain out of sight. He reached the corner and peeked around. One of the Mayor’s guards towered over the kneeling form of Jacen, the baker. Jacen’s bloodied mouth and swollen eye told a tale.

  “Please! I swear I’ll pay you the rest next week,” Jacen begged.

  The guard cuffed the baker on the ear. “Your portion was due today.”

  “My wife’s sick. I had to pay the healer. She couldn’t work this week. She’s better now. We’ll make it up. I promise.”

  “Your excuses don’t interest the Lord Mayor.” The guard aimed a kick at Jacen, who scrambled to avoid the blow.

  “I’ll have coin to pay you in a few days.”

  “Not my problem.”

  Bleeding and bruised, the baker got to his feet and returned a few moments later with a few coins, probably all the money he had left. “Here. Take it.”

  “I’ll be back for the rest,” the guard said, shouldering past.

  Kell eased back into the shadows as the guard stalked away. He waited several minutes before he continued on his way.

  The guards get bolder every day, and there’s naught to be done about it. If the gods are concerned about the Balance, why don’t the monsters go after the bloody guards?

  Troubling thoughts churned in his mind the whole way back to the undertaker’s shop.

  “WHAT TOOK YOU so long?” Corran glared at Kell.

  “There’s at least half a candlemark until nightfall.” Kell shrugged out of his jacket. “The seer at The Muddy Goat says there’ll be more monsters within the fortnight,” he reported. “She also predicts there’ll be trouble for witches and Wanderers. Couple more people have disappeared, and Arcad’s been arrested as a hunter and taken to the Mayor’s jail.”

  Rigan and Corran both stopped still at that.

  “Oh, and the dead guy with the knife wound? We’ve been paid extra to bury him with the wrong markings outside holy ground.”

  I’d have dumped the body in the sewer if I didn’t think he’d float.

  Someone might have recognized him.

  “Doesn’t take an oracle to predict more monsters,” Corran muttered. “Or trouble for Wanderers and witches. I think the seer is a fraud.” Something in Corran’s tone sent a shiver of worry down Kell’s back. Rigan turned away, looking troubled, but said nothing. Rigan and Corran laid the bodies out on wooden tables. On one wall hung joiner’s tools, for making caskets. On another were the embalmer’s supplies: honey, juniper, cedar, cinnamon, vinegar, wine, and salt. A jar of aconite and one of amanita powder sat on a shelf, for the binding rituals. Winding sheets lay in a pile, for those who could not afford a coffin but wanted more than plain burlap. A table in the back held the knives and saws, above which were shelves filled with pots of ochre and soot, chalk and woad, all used to prepare bodies for their journey into the After. Shovels leaned against the corner of the workshop, ready for the next trip to the burying ground.

  They set the bricklayer’s body on a table off to one side, so that they could first see to the clients for whom more expensive arrangements had been made. Rigan and Corran used leather gloves to lift the fever victims’ bodies while Kell threw a length of burlap beneath each of them, which doubled back to cover the front of the bodies and gathered along each side with a drawstring. They would add more quicklime at the cemetery.

  Brissy’s corpse took up a table on the right, toward the better quality preparations, while the lodger with the bad heart went on a slab to the left, with the cheaper materials. The monster-savaged body also went to the left, for the minimal preparations Prendicott’s payment covered.

  Rigan stood looking at the man Polly had stabbed. “Someone actually paid you extra for us to send this bloke to the Darkness?” “Uh huh.” Kell didn’t look up.

  “Don’t go offering that sort of thing,” Corran grumbled. “Bad for us if the Guild hears.”

  “You did real good,” Rigan said, looking out over the bodies as he tied on his work apron and pulled on the leather gloves blessed to protect against contagion. “The Guild body and the one from The Lame Dragon more than make up for the slim payment on the others.”

  Corran eyed Kell. “What did you promise Agatha about Brissy’s body?”

  “I just said we’d do right by her.”

  Corran swore under his breath. “Well, there go a few more coins to the priest for his prayers.”

  Rigan glared at Corran. “Something’s really got up your nose today, hasn’t it? Mama always said Agatha was good to her when she was a girl. That’s worth something. For Mama’s sake.” Rigan did not catch Corran’s grumbled response, but he shot Kell a victorious smile when Corran wasn’t looking, certain the matter was settled.

  “Since the stew’s already simmering, you can stay and watch, maybe lend a hand, Kell,” Corran said. “The Guild won’t let us officially apprentice you for another year, but they can’t stop you from learning the ropes in the meantime. Mind you’re careful with the blades. It only takes a poke and you’re as dead as the corpse.

  That’s how Uncle Rem died.”

  Kell bit back a response and fetched the leather work belt. A hammer, saws of several sizes, and pliers were part of preparing the body for its journey to the gods. A row of pottery jars sat against one wall, ready for the more elaborate preparations.

  The brothers began work on the mason first. “There’s not much left of him, is there?” Rigan remarked, looking at the crushed body. “We can’t do much about removing his innards, since they’re smashed to jelly, but at least the head’s in one piece,” Corran replied.

  “Go prepare the wash,” Corran ordered, Kell went to get one of the full buckets of water that the brothers drew early in the day. Long practice meant Kell could go down the row of bottles quickly, pouring out just the right amount of the expensive spices and tinctures into a cup carved with runes and sigils sacred to the gods. He made a hurried sign of blessing over the cup, and then dumped the contents into one of the buckets.

  He brought the bucket and rags to Rigan and Corran, and went to fetch the shroud and winding sheets.

  “This is not going to work well,” Rigan observed, looking at the shattered remains of the mason.

  “Do what you can,” Corran said. “The Guil
d paid well and the gods will appreciate the effort.”

  Kell mixed the pigments—ochre for the gods of the earth; woad for the gods of the sea; chalk for the gods of the sky; soot for the gods of fire. Corran motioned for Kell to bring the paints closer.

  There were songs to be sung over the departed, and ways in which even the humblest corpse had to be readied to present itself to the ancient spirits. Corran sang in the old language, and his clear baritone sent chills down Kell’s spine. Rigan took the palette and put his thumb into the ochre, drawing a complicated sigil as best he could on the dead man’s crushed abdomen. Next, he marked in chalk on what remained of the chest, making another symbol in woad across the lips, and finally drawing one more rune in soot on the forehead. Corran lifted the battered corpse onto the bottom sheet of a linen shroud, and wrapped it in clean strips of cloth. The shattered corpse jiggled disturbingly as they worked. Corran made a motion in blessing.

  “That will have to do,” Corran said once they were finished. “I’ll ask the priest to say some extra blessings at the grave site.” Brissy’s body received the same treatment, despite Agatha’s meager payment. Next was the old man with the bad heart.

  “How much did Mistress Glimph pay you?” Corran asked Kell. “As little as she could.”

  “All right,” Corran said. “Sprinkle his body with water. We’re not preparing a fresh wash when she’s barely paid enough for the shroud.

  Don’t use more of the pigment than you have to. No winding sheets, either. We might make a few bronzes on him if we keep it simple.” Working together, the three brothers quickly prepared the old man’s body. Corran and Rigan then stepped outside and saw to the two wretches in the cart, though Rigan used a brush to paint the symbols on the shroud instead of on the bodies themselves. Once they’d finished, Corran turned to body of the man from The Lame Dragon.

  “Looks like someone stuck a knife in this one,” he mused, pulling away the bloody shirt. He eyed the other bruises. “Seems he might have had it coming.”

  “He did,” Kell muttered. Rigan gave him a sidelong glance, but did not say anything.

  “What?” Corran asked.

  “I imagine he did… have it coming,” Kell said, covering his slip.

  “No other reason someone would pay for a curse now, is there?”

  Even if I paid the extra from our grocery money.

  If Rigan suspected that Kell had a personal stake in the matter, he said nothing—at least not in front of Corran. “Looks like a sailor,” Rigan said, taking a closer look at the stained shirt. “Guess he pushed his luck a little too far.” Corran turned to get more pigment, and Rigan took something out of the dead man’s hand: several strands of red hair, clutched in the corpse’s stiffened fingers.

  He hesitated for a moment, then dropped the hairs to the floor and reached for the paints. “This won’t take long.”

  A mere lack of burial or rituals wasn’t enough to curse the dead; the curse was a combination of mismarking the runes and then burying the body beyond the hallowed ground of the burial yard. Rigan didn’t like doing the curse runes, but tonight he made no comment. “There,” he said, finishing the runes and then carefully washing the pigments from his hands with the clean, blessed water Kell had prepared. “That should do it. We won’t lose money on him without a shroud or a priest’s fee, or a coin to the burying yard.” The savaged body was the last one left. “I guess the seer was wrong about the monsters not coming back for a fortnight,” Rigan said, looking down at the corpse. “Looks like ghouls have been at them.”

  “We wouldn’t have these problems if the guards did their job,”

  Corran muttered. He shifted as if his shoulder hurt him, and Kell watched him closely, wondering what he had done to injure himself. “I saw one of the guards beating Jacen, the baker,” Kell said. “He didn’t pay his full portion.”

  Corran swore under his breath. “A pox on the guards, and the clap as well.”

  Rigan glanced at him. “They’ll be by here in the next day or so. Can we pay ours?”

  “Yeah, but there’s not much left over afterward, even after a good day. That chicken in the pot upstairs might be the last one for a week or so, unless more folks than usual take sick.”

  “We’ll get by,” Rigan said. An odd look crossed his features as he looked down at the corpse. Does the body make him think of Mama?

  Kell wondered. Is that how she looked?

  Even now, his memories of that awful night were a jumble. His mother had gone to visit a friend, not far away. She never made it back. Kell had heard her scream from the street outside their shop.

  Corran was the first to realize what was happening; he’d shoved Kell into the upstairs bedroom and locked him in. Rigan and Corran would never tell Kell exactly what they did next. He’d heard the door slam behind them and watched from the window until they were out of sight.

  A candlemark later, when Rigan came to let him out of the room, both brothers were covered with blood. Rigan had been the one to take Kell aside and break the news. Corran was down in the workroom, tending to their mother’s body, making preparations, saying prayers to the gods. Corran had forbidden Kell to see the mangled corpse. He knew his brother meant it as a kindness, but Kell had never had the chance to see her face again, and was left saying his goodbyes to a shrouded body. And I’m supposed to believe the gods took her to keep some kind of Balance no one can explain? So I lose my mother, and that cancels out something somewhere else? No. It’s just another lie.

  As if Rigan could guess the direction Kell’s thoughts had taken, he nudged his brother gently in the ribs. “Hey, we can handle this one. Why don’t you get cleaned up and see to dinner? Pour us each a glass of whiskey while you’re at it. I think we’ve earned it today.”

  Kell eagerly made his escape. He washed up in the horse trough outside, shivering since the evening had grown cool. Then he went upstairs, and lit the kitchen lanterns.

  The bread hadn’t risen right, and the stew was too thick. “It’ll have to do,” he murmured. “It’s hardly like Mama got the chance to teach me to cook—or thought I’d need to know.” He told himself that it was the smoke from the kitchen fire making his eyes tear up.

  “That smells good—even for your cooking.” Rigan came into the kitchen, Corran right behind him. They sat at the table as Kell set out the meal. He had already poured them each a generous measure of whiskey.

  As they ate, Rigan recounted the gossip he had heard from some of the other tradesmen that day.

  “I’ve got to go to a Guild meeting,” Corran said when the meal was finished. He tossed back the last of his whiskey.

  “It’s not safe to be out this late,” Rigan cautioned.

  “I won’t go unarmed. There’s no helping it, and the meeting isn’t far.”

  “Why are they holding meetings after curfew? That’s asking for trouble.”

  “Because we all have to work, to put food on the table. It’s the only time everyone could get together. Special project for the Guild Master.”

  “I could go with you, as back-up,” Rigan volunteered.

  Corran shook his head. “No need to put both of us in danger. I’ll be fine. Really. You stay here with Kell.”

  A look passed between the two older brothers, and Kell could see Rigan was not happy with Corran’s plan.

  “All right, then. Watch yourself,” Rigan said.

  Corran gave a curt nod and went downstairs.

  Once Rigan and Kell had tidied away the supper things, Rigan poured them both a good measure of whiskey.

  “Corran will have something to say if we go through the bottle too fast,” Kell said. “Good whiskey’s expensive.”

  Rigan merely smiled and walked over to the window, opening the shutters. The night air was cool. From here, they could see down to the harbor, and beyond to a sky full of stars.

  “Corran doesn’t mean to be so gruff, you know,” Rigan said.

  “You could have fooled me.”


  Rigan’s lips twitched in a sad smile. “All right. He knows he’s being gruff. But he wasn’t ready to take over the business so soon. He’s got his hands full, trying to make enough to pay the King’s taxes, the Guild’s fee, and the Mayor’s portion, and still make ends meet. It’s not like we have a choice about what we do for a living. Corran worries himself sick over keeping us both safe.” He sighed. “And I gave him good cause this week. Damn.”

  “What would you do, if you had a choice? If you weren’t tied to the job?” Kell asked.

  “I’d travel,” Rigan said wistfully. “Do you see those ships in the harbor? I want to know where they go. I want to see what’s on the other side of the ocean. I’d be happy just to see what’s outside of Ravenwood.”

  Ravenwood was one of the larger, wealthier independent principalities in the Bakaran League. Beyond the city walls lay the farms and vineyards of the Merchant Princes, as well as smaller towns and villages. Further out were the other nine city-states, and the distant kingdoms people within the League referred to as ‘The Unaligned.’ Rigan sighed. “How about you? What would you do?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be a cook,” Kell replied, and they both chuckled. “I don’t rightly know what else I’d want to do. But if I had to pick, it might be nice to work with the living.”

  Rigan laughed. “I’m not sure about that. Have you been around many of them? At least the dead are polite.”

  They watched the moonlight on the ocean in silence for a few moments. Finally, Kell said, “I’m afraid I’m forgetting them, Rigs. Mama and Papa. I know, with Mama, it’s only been six months. But sometimes, when I try to remember their voices, it’s hard. I can see their faces in my mind, but what if that fades too? I don’t want to forget.”

  Rigan took a long breath before he answered. “Sometimes, I wish I could. The night Mama died… there was a reason Corran locked you in your room, Kell. He didn’t want you to see her, how—how she was at the end.”

  Rigan and Corran had prepared their mother’s body for burial, seen to the rituals themselves, and paid the priests extra coin. Corran, who had always been bossy, grew moody and snappish. Rigan tried to mediate, but often ended up walking out in disgust when they could not stop arguing. After that, they had been so busy keeping body and soul together that there wasn’t much time for talk.