Fallow

by Jordan L. Hawk

  “I’m yours,” I whispered in his ear. “And you’re mine. Nothing in this world can ever change that.”

  His hands gripped my vest. “Show me.”

  I glanced at the window. The sun was high—too high to dare sneaking out of the jewelry store, certainly for hours to come. There was time.

  I freed myself from his embrace just long enough to ease the bedroom door closed, in case anyone decided to come check on us. He stripped off his clothing as I did so, then attacked mine once I rejoined him.

  The bed was uncomfortable, and we were both filthy from sweat and dust, but I didn’t care. I pulled him close, kissing and nipping at his neck, until he squirmed against me. I stroked the scars lacing his right arm, then made my way down, mapping his chest and belly with my mouth. He tasted of salt and dry earth, but he smelled like the ocean.

  I lavished attention on his cock and balls, sucking and licking without haste. His fingers threaded into my hair, tightening as I traced the veins on his prick with my tongue. “Griffin,” he whispered. “Please hold me. I need to see your face.”

  I paused just long enough to lap at his slit before obeying. He caught me fiercely to him, kissing me hard. I wrapped my arms around him tight, and flung a leg over his hip. “I see you,” I murmured, once he let me speak again. “And I love what I see. More than I would ever have thought possible.”

  He slipped a hand between us, gripping first his cock, then curling his long fingers around mine as well. I kissed him, lips parted, and then sucked hard on his tongue when he slipped it into my mouth. A shudder went through him, hips bucking, rubbing our bodies together. I loved the feel of him against me; I loved his scent and his taste, the way he laughed, the line between his brows when he concentrated, everything.

  He pulled his mouth free of mine, back arching—then bit me on the shoulder to muffle a cry. Hot semen coated my belly and cock, and the sting of his teeth sent a jolt through me. I swallowed back a shout and lost myself to the pleasure of it all, until we were both slick with our mutual spend.

  My coat was ruined anyway, so I used it to clean us up as best I could, then hurled it into a corner. Whyborne curled up against me, his head on my shoulder. I kissed his brow and wrapped my arm around his shoulders.

  As I stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, a sharp, almost painful longing for our own bed in our own house gripped me. I’d always told myself it didn’t matter where I lay my head, but that wasn’t true anymore.

  It hadn’t been for a long time now.

  “I belong in Widdershins,” I said quietly. “And I will fight with everything in me to save it.”

  His lips pressed against my shoulder, over the mark where he’d bitten me in his passion. “Then we should probably move, as much as I would prefer to stay here.” He sat up, then frowned. “Wait. Did you say your mother is downstairs?”

  ~ * ~

  Christine looked up when Whyborne and I emerged onto the lower floor. She sat near the door, pistol in her hand, the rifle I’d scavenged from the general store across her lap. Their eyes met; neither of them said anything, but Whyborne opened his arms.

  They held each other for a while in silence. Eventually, he drew back and kissed her forehead. “We’re going to save him.”

  “I know that,” she muttered, and punched Whyborne on the arm.

  “Ow.” He glared at her, rubbing his arm. “There’s something I have to tell you. About last night.” He glanced pointedly at Creigh. “Privately.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Creigh said. “We need to plan.”

  “The backroom should do,” I said, and led the way past the empty counters. Christine picked up a burlap sack and followed us back.

  The room was tiny and windowless, occupied only by a large safe which must have once held the more valuable pieces. Christine shut the door, then opened the sack. “I made sure to bring this back from the farm with me,” she said, pulling out the bottle of whiskey the porter had given her on the train. “I rather thought we might need it.”

  We passed the bottle around. Keeping his voice low, Whyborne explained to Christine everything he’d told me about the maelstrom.

  “I love you, Whyborne,” Christine said when he’d finished. “But you’re an idiot.”

  He glared at her. “Thank you, Christine. I’m so glad Widdershins collected you.”

  A slight frown crossed her face. “But what about K-Kander?” Her eyes glistened slightly, but no tears fell. “He came to Widdershins to be with me. Didn’t he?”

  “Of course he did. The maelstrom doesn’t alter people’s emotions,” Whyborne said. “Just...probabilities, you might say. But changing anyone would defeat the purpose. It might have made certain your paths crossed, but possibly not even that.”

  “Well, I do understand it wanting the best archaeologist,” Christine said with a firm nod. “And if it brought Kander to me, even better.”

  Whyborne shook his head and took a pull from the bottle. “Don’t any of you recall it’s a horrible murder town?”

  “I don’t give a fig, if its influence got me into the field,” Christine replied. “It needed us, but we needed it, too. I don’t see why you’re complaining because we’re happy with our lives. Although I must say all of this sorcery nonsense has interfered with my career over the last few years.” Then she brightened. “Which means you owe it to me to come to Egypt and clear the fane of deadly magic so I can do a proper excavation.”

  “Perhaps we should concentrate on saving Iskander and surviving this first,” I said. “Hopefully Creigh will have the answers we need.”

  “She said if we kill Marian, the rust will go dormant,” Christine said. “The corrupted will be freed, and in time their bodies will clear it as any infection. Except for the cinereous, of course; they’re too far gone.” She gave us a quizzical look. “Surely you don’t believe I was simply sitting and moping down here while Whyborne was taking his nap.”

  “Never,” I said. “So I take it you have a plan, then?”

  “Yes. It involves my rifle, a bullet, and Marian’s head.”

  “Simple and straightforward.” I saluted her with the bottle. “I approve.”

  “I still want to talk to Creigh,” Whyborne said.

  We returned to the main room. Before we could say anything, Creigh snapped, “Are you finished? Can we get to the important matter of not dying at Marian’s hands now?”

  Whyborne folded his arms over his chest, using his full height to glare down at Creigh. “Tell us what you had planned here, from the beginning.” When she hesitated, he gestured at the window. “Whatever plan you had is in ruins. The reservoir of rust spores beneath the ground has been destroyed. Marian has slipped the leash, and given that she can eat any spell you try to cast on her, I can’t imagine you’ll be able to get her back under control. You’ve lost.”

  “And whose fault is that?” Creigh demanded.

  “Oh, yes, we should have just let you kill us all,” Christine said with a roll of her eyes. “What terrible inconvenience we’ve caused you.”

  “How were you able to cast the spell in the first place?” I asked Creigh. “If the corrupted feed on magic.”

  “Only the avatar can directly absorb spells, not all of the corrupted. And because she consented to it.” Creigh sighed, as though our questions were an annoying distraction. “Very well. The Fideles have long scoured the earth, looking for old works of the masters. Not umbrae or ketoi—we don’t wish to be seen as consorting with rebels, after all. Fallow was one of the locations we suspected might harbor something unusual.”

  “Because of the barren spot?” I guessed.

  She nodded. “Yes. A bit of research into certain arcane volumes, and we even suspected what it might be.” She offered a cold smile to Whyborne. “You don’t have the key to the Wisborg Codex, do you?”

  Whyborne scowled. “Go on.”

  “If you did, you’d have recognized the import of the transferal sphere. Delancey probably took
it with him under the assumption you’d know what it was. Did he live long enough to be disappointed?”

  “Just tell us what the damned thing is,” Christine growled. “It had something to do with the corruption, obviously.”

  “During the time of the masters, it—and others like it—were used to seed the rust spores from place to place.” Creigh folded her arms over her chest and leaned back slightly, as though she enjoyed lecturing us. “Some acolyte must have brought it here to hide when they left this world for the Outside. Eons it lay beneath the earth. Over time, the corruption did as it was meant, and...hatched isn’t quite the right word, I suppose. Burned its way out of its artificial shell.

  “We thought the fallow place might mark such an event, but we weren’t sure. So we came here and set about drilling. Luckily for me, there was not only a drought, but one of the landowners whose farm bordered the fallow place was...amenable to certain suggestions.” She glanced at me. “Your cousin Vernon—but he isn’t really your cousin, is he?”

  “That’s none of your concern,” Whyborne said, and his breath frosted the air.

  “He’d come here to prove himself, but his farm was failing,” Creigh went on. “It didn’t take much to see either the ambition burning in him, or the rage in his wife. Oh, how she longed for her revenge against this wretched town.” She turned to Ma, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner ever since Whyborne and I came downstairs. “I take it I have you to thank for that.”

  “Leave her out of this,” I said sharply.

  Creigh shrugged. “As you wish. We found the transferal sphere, which both confirmed what we suspected and told us where we needed to put the main well. So I offered Marian and Vernon both what they wanted most. Vernon would prosper when all others failed. Marian would see at least some members of the community suffer. The fact I offered to form her into the instrument controlling them made it impossible to refuse.”

  “That’s it,” Whyborne said suddenly. The rest of us looked at him in surprise. “The pattern.”

  “What are you going on about?” Christine asked.

  “There’s a pattern to the masters’ creations,” he said, voice rising in excitement. “The god commands the ketoi—or at least speaks to them. Presumably before the rebellion, the masters would somehow give orders to the god, and it would pass those along to the ketoi. The umbrae are a more refined version, you might say. The Mother of Shadows takes the place of the god in the hierarchy, and all her children follow her commands due their very biology. The rust’s control—”

  “The avatar,” Creigh put in. “The first infected.”

  “The avatar controls the others corrupted by the rust.” He paled. “And the maelstrom reaches out and influences those it finds valuable...”

  I put my hand to his arm, squeezing tight. “What did you just say, about the maelstrom not influencing the way those it chooses think and feel, because that would defeat the purpose?” I asked. “That sounds the precise opposite of the rust.”

  “Quite right,” Christine said.

  Creigh looked at Whyborne speculatively. “What are you?” she murmured.

  “Once again, that’s none of your concern,” I snapped.

  Whyborne put his hand on mine briefly, then let it fall. “In the case of both the Mother of Shadows and the avatar, the masters used an enchanted gem to compel them to obey. I wonder if they had something similar for the dweller in the deeps?” He frowned. “Where did you come upon the enchanted jewel you used to command the avatar?”

  She glanced at me. “That’s none of your concern.”

  “As fascinating as this is, it’s academic at the moment,” I said. “Go on, Creigh. You infected Marian, then your charges at the poor farm. You convinced the mayor’s family to join in your little scheme, giving you even more of a grip on the community. You sent Odell and Evers to Widdershins.”

  “To keep an eye on things for us there, yes. Not that they realized Marian was watching through them. At least, until we needed to control their actions directly.”

  “Because you meant to infect Widdershins, just as Marian infected Fallow.” A slow rage built in me at the thought, and I took a deep breath for calm.

  “Of course.” Creigh shrugged. “Why wouldn’t we? Widdershins isn’t just a source of immense power currently lost to us—it’s where the masters will return from the Outside. If they emerge through the veil into the middle of a town set against them, it won’t look as if we’ve done a proper job, now will it? Two birds with one stone—we’d get access to the maelstrom’s power, and secure Widdershins for the masters.” Her eyes narrowed. “If Delancey’s nerve hadn’t failed...but it did.”

  “You knew—or guessed—he was coming to Widdershins,” Whyborne said. “And you ordered Odell to stop him.”

  “Yes. Another failure—Odell was slow and didn’t locate him until too late. You were warned.”

  “Why have them harangue and try to kill Griffin?” Christine asked. “We would have investigated anyway, but it certainly lent the situation some urgency.”

  Creigh straightened, her pale brows drawing down. “What?”

  “That was all Marian,” I said. “From the beginning. She blamed me for Benjamin’s death, or at least the events leading up to it. She wanted me to pay for what I’d done.”

  Christine gave Creigh a nasty smile. “It looks like she was slipping the leash from the start. Vernon was right—you shouldn’t have underestimated her.”

  “Indeed.” Creigh’s eyes snapped with angry fire. “I thought it would be easier to keep her in line if I offered her a bit of leeway. I should have known better than to treat a tool as an equal. It isn’t a mistake I’ll make again.”

  “Yes, that’s certainly the lesson we should all take from this,” Christine muttered.

  Whyborne and I exchanged a glance. What we would do with Creigh once our very temporary alliance was over, I didn’t know. Certainly we couldn’t with good conscience unleash her back on the world.

  But that was a worry for later. For now, we needed to get close enough to Marian to kill her, without coming to a bad end ourselves. “All right,” I began.

  I got no farther. The sound of a train whistle cut through the still air, coming from the direction of the grain elevator spur.

  Whyborne’s eyes went wide. “Oh no. They must almost be ready to move the grain, if they’ve the engine running and steam built up.”

  Christine had stepped to the window at the sound. “Damn it. We have a problem.”

  I joined her at the window. A large group of townsfolk shuffled down the center of the street. Their faces were slack, and they moved in eerie formation as they made their way directly toward us.

  Chapter 33

  Whyborne

  The steam whistle sounded again, its distant scream drawing my nerves tight. The train was like a dagger, aimed right at the heart of Widdershins.

  We couldn’t let it arrive. But Marian didn’t mean to make it easy on us.

  How she’d discovered us, I couldn’t guess. Most likely, one of the corrupted townsfolk had noticed some clue as to where we’d gone.

  I stared out the window at them. The setting sun lowered onto the horizon, painting their features in amber light. “I don’t see Kander,” Christine said, and though her tone was calm, I heard the fear beneath the words.

  I put a hand to her shoulder. “There’s Miss Tate. Still wearing her dress from the community dance. I owe her an apology—it might have seen Fifth Avenue after all.”

  “Can we talk to them?” Nella asked. “I know them—they’ll listen to me.”

  I didn’t look at her. While we dressed after making love, Griffin had told me what she’d done. Between her letters, the blasted editor of the newspaper, and people like Mr. Tate, Benjamin’s life must have been hell. No wonder Marian wanted everyone dead.

  “They’re under the influence of magic, Ma,” Griffin said. “You can’t reason with them.”

  “No,” I said.
“But we can use them.”

  Christine glanced at me. “You have a plan?”

  “The livery stable is down the street. I’ll delay them while you secure a cart.” I glanced at Creigh. “You said Marian can see through their eyes. So we make absolutely certain they see us leaving town in the cart. Especially Nella.”

  Griffin frowned. “Whyborne...”

  “The rest of us abandon the cart and circle back around, the first opportunity we have.” I turned to face Nella. “You keep driving, but not so fast as for them to lose your trail. Animals hate them, so they’ll have to go on foot after you. Pretend there’s a problem with one of the horses, the cart, I don’t care, but make sure they stay on your trail. Marian won’t pass up the opportunity to kill you. It will keep both us and the infected townspeople safe.”

  “Some of them are armed!” Griffin exclaimed hotly. “You’re putting my mother in danger!”

  Nella met my gaze. “I’ll do it,” she said to me. “If you promise not to let anything happen to my boy.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” I glared down at her. “What you did to Benjamin Walter was heinous. Griffin knows I would die for him, and that’s all that matters. I don’t give a damn for your opinion.”

  “There’s no time for this,” Creigh snapped.

  Nella didn’t look at all happy, but she nodded. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  “Then let’s hurry,” Christine said.

  “Indeed.” I went to the door. “Go out the back way. I’ll distract them.”

  “Be careful, Ival,” Griffin called after me.

  The eyes of the corrupted fixed on me the moment I stepped into the street. My charred shirt sleeve fluttered in the wind, and I set myself squarely in their path. Waiting.

  Parson Norton was at the forefront. He’d refused to let Benjamin Walter be buried in the church yard, inflicting one more cruelty on Marian in the midst of her grief. Was the newspaper editor Carson among them as well? The one who’d run Vernon’s slander, naming Griffin a lunatic, insinuating there was something unnatural about Christine and Iskander’s marriage.