by Hazel Hunter
“Look, just because you ate a baby demon in front of me doesn’t mean I know you, okay? No offense, but this place is creepy, and in my regular life, I’m not used to being around ferrets who talk. I mean, who are you really?”
To her surprise, he nearly flattened himself to the ground. She was no pro at reading ferret body language, but he looked heartbroken.
“That’s a good question, isn’t it?” he said, his formerly stentorian voice withered down to a squeak. “I don’t remember who I used to be, but I get flashes sometimes, terrible flashes. There was a man and a woman, and they betrayed each other, and then I betrayed them. We were all here, and it was all terrible for us, but some fates are better than others, I guess.”
Ferret turned liquid black eyes to her.
“It has been so long, and we’ve been punished enough, don’t you think? Don’t you think we’ve been punished enough?”
Hailey felt her heart go out to the animal.
“I couldn’t say,” she said honestly. “I’ve known very little of betrayal in my life and even less of demons. If you swear that you won’t lead me astray, I’ll let you come with me.”
Ferret puffed up as if he had been re-inflated, sitting up tall on his hind legs
“On my honor and by my troth, I do so swear, Hailey my girl. I am your humble servant.”
She grinned at what a martial picture he made.
“All right, that sounds splendid. Let’s get going, the last thing that I want to do here is to put down roots.”
She bent, offering him her hand. To her surprise, he took hold of her hoodie sleeve and scuttled up her sleeve with impressive speed. She squirmed, ticklish for a moment as he explored her hair and her hood. Finally, he curled around the back of her neck, his pert head poking out right beneath her left earlobe.
“All right, cry mercy for the good of St. George, let us off to find your warlocks!”
Hailey wished that she could feel as confident as Ferret did. Still, there was nothing to do but to walk forward, and so she did.
CHAPTER TWO
HAILEY WASN’T SURE how long she had walked, but the territory around her was shifting. Instead of being rocky and bare, grass began to grow up around her. With every step she took, the area took on new life. The grass grew tall around her boots, and here and there, she could see copses of trees. It would have been quite peaceful if the sky overhead had changed. Instead, it stayed the same sullen purple, rising up over everything like an acid storm ready to break.
“Where are we?” she asked softly.
Ferret made a soft thrumming noise that could almost be a purr. She thought he meant it to be comforting.
“Steady, lass, steady. The Shadow Walk Prison is a changeable place worked by many hands. Right now, I don’t think this is shaped by yours. It could mean that it was shaped by a demon, but I don’t think so.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“I’ve been here long enough that I know a few tricks, and what I can see is that your desire leads you like an arrow. You know where you are going, and you know what you are going to find. I think we are where we need to be.”
She smiled. Speaking of arrows made her think of the blessing that Liona had conferred upon her before she left Wyoming and the Castle. The witch had pricked Hailey’s finger on an arrow before using a longbow to send it spinning off into the forest. The arrow’s flight had been straight and true, even if they could not see where it was going to land. She knew that sooner or later, she too would strike her target.
She kept on walking, and after what felt like hours, she could hear sounds as well. There was the crashing of waves on a not-so-distant shore, there was the mewing of seagulls, and after a moment, she could hear the shrieks of children at play.
Hailey frowned. She had grown up rough, and she knew how terrible children’s play could be. Without thinking about it, she started walking towards the cries. As they grew louder, her suspicions became certainties. Some of those children were shouting with glee, but there was at least one child whose voice was raised in terror and pain.
With a stifled curse, she started running towards the scene, and she was completely unsurprised at what she saw there. It was a pack of three boys roughing up a third, throwing his thin body from hand to hand. The smaller boy was cringing underneath the blows, his small body trembling and his face streaked with tears.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Hailey snarled, grabbing one of the bigger boys and giving him a hard shove. “Get out of here. You’re nothing more than a monster. Get out of here before I do something really nasty.”
The boys looked like they were unimpressed, but then Hailey’s temper peaked. She could hear a dry flashing sound. The boys’ eyes widened, but no more than Hailey’s did. Her rage had apparently mounted to the point where the ends of her hair lit aflame. It didn’t hurt her; it never did when she was using fire, but it was an impressive display. As one, they took to their heels.
Her fire dimmed and then went out completely, much to the grumbling relief of Ferret who had taken refuge in the front pockets of her hoodie. Hailey ignored him in favor of the young boy who was still on the ground.
He lay flat on his face, his whole body wracked with sobs that he couldn’t hide.
“Oh sweetheart, come here, I’m so sorry…”
She reached for him, but he flinched pulling away from her to sit with his back to her. He was dressed in archaic clothing, wearing only a poorly woven tunic belted at the waist with a cord. He looked like he was wearing bags of leather around his feet.
Hailey allowed him to sit farther away from her. She could remember being a hurt child all too well, and with that came an intense distrust of everyone, even the ones who did not mean any harm. Instead, she sat down on the ground beside him, gently coaxing Ferret out to play on her lap. She wiggled her fingers for the small animal to pounce.
It occurred to her to wonder if this little boy was a trap just as her old doll had been. He could have been just another demon looking to prey on her weakness. She decided that she didn’t care. She wouldn’t have been herself if she could look away from a child in need. If he turned out to be a demon, that was something that she could face when the time came. She didn’t need to think about it just then.
Slowly, she saw the shaking of his shoulders subside, and he peeked over his shoulder to look at her. With his lank black hair in his eyes, he looked rather like an overgrown puppy. That made her smile until she thought of puppies that had been kicked once too often even in their short, little lives.
“Are you a woman of power, mistress?” he asked, his voice thick with an accent she could not name. “Are you going to eat me?”
She laughed.
“Do I look like I’m going to eat you?”
He looked her up and down carefully with such suspicion that she stifled another laugh.
“No, I suppose not. You don’t look like a witch, more like a river woman, mayhap.”
“What does a river woman do?’
“Oh they’re pretty girls with red hair just like yourself. They sing, and they draw men down to the water, and when they come all the way down, they drown them.”
“That doesn’t sound very kind.”
The boy shrugged.
“It’s the way of things. You find the strength you can, and you use it as best you can. My master told me that.”
Hailey blinked.
“Your master? Are you a slave?” It made her heart sick to think of this little boy being sold like a piece of chattel.
“No, mistress, I’m an apprentice to Tom Smith, who serves Dun Bellock. He’s got the biggest smithy in the region.”
“You’re apprenticed to a blacksmith?”
She must not have been able to keep the incredulity out of her voice, because he winced, straightening up as best he could. She could see that he was a skinny child, nothing but long bones and skin. The thought of him working in a smithy was shocking to her.
“I can work the bellows,” he
said defiantly. “I can run and fetch and carry.”
“It sounds like you do a great job,” she said sincerely.
It broke her heart to see the emotions that spread over his face. First he checked her face for any sign of a lie. When he couldn’t find any, he broke into the widest grin that she had seen.
“I’ll be a fine smith someday with my own smithy,” he said confidently. “And I won’t make just horseshoes and bits, either, I’ll make swords and spearheads for all the fine knights.”
“That sounds like a good life,” Hailey said with a smile. “I’m glad you have a plan.”
Like clouds covering the sun, his expression darkened again.
“Jason and Richard say I can’t, though. They say because I’m bastard born and so small besides that I’ll never be more than a journeyman. I’ll never be able to move up in the world, even though I’ve only been an apprentice a little less long than them.”
Hailey reached out carefully to tousle his hair. When he didn’t flinch, she patted his hand.
“Jason and Richard, were they two of the boys that were picking on you before?”
He nodded darkly.
“Them and Thomas too. They’re not so much better than me. They’re not half so clever. Everyone says so.”
Hailey didn’t quite know what to say. There was a kind of ugly rage on the boy’s face, something that she was only used to seeing on people much older. If he had been bigger or older, she would have been frightened. Almost as if picking up on her thoughts, Ferret started chittering nervously in her pocket.
“I wish they were gone. I wish they would go back to the families that they have and make a living far away from me. I wish they would just leave me alone. I wish they were dead!”
On the last words, his voice rose up to a shout. Hailey reached out for him, but he pushed her hand away. There were tears in his eyes again, but they were bright and furious.
“Don’t touch me, I’m not a baby who needs to be cosseted. I’ll grow into a man who takes nothing from no one, and no one will be able to push me about again!”
“Of course you’re not a baby, and I’m not cosseting you. But surely you can see that this rage will not serve you either? If you carry it around with you, if you keep it with you, you’ll do yourself an evil.”
“What do you know?” he snarled, glaring at her. “Do you go to sleep all emptied because they took your food? Does Tom Smith beat you bloody when they tip over the scrap slag and tell him it was you?”
Hailey flinched. From the way his tunic sagged off his shoulder, she could see old purple welts on his skin. That he had been beaten at so young an age made her stomach turn.
“I don’t know any of that,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “All I know is that hate has never served half as well as reason. Hate hurts you and blinds you. It makes you terrible to your enemies, but I know that it makes you terrible to those who would love you as well.”
There was a brief moment where the boy looked like he would cry again, but that same anger swept over his face.
“No one loves me, mistress. No one loves bastards, and so I’m told over and over again. Leave me alone with your lies!”
He spun away from her, and it was only in that moment, when the angle was just right and when the hair flew out of his bright blue eyes that she knew who he was.
Kieran McCallen was a big man, tall and broad. It was hard to imagine him as a skinny, friendless child, but there it was. There was no uncertainty in her at all. That the man she loved had once been this abused and hurt child, made her want to cry.
“Kieran!”
He paused, but then he started to run. There was a moment where her finger touched the tip of his sleeve. She might have caught him, but he was too quick for her.
She knew that it was beyond a shadow of a doubt her lover. She couldn’t let him go on with that hate, she knew it. It would bring him nothing but grief. It would make him suffer a man’s burden before he was even big enough to swing a sword or a hammer.
The territory around her changed again. It grew colder and more rocky. She was so frantic about finding Kieran again that she nearly ran herself off a cliff. It was only Ferret’s timely bite that made her pull back in shock.
The drop that she had almost run over was a steep one. There were sharp stones at the bottom and an impossible climb back up. She scanned the landscape around her anxiously. Far to her right was a lone figure standing on the edge. Whoever it was was far too tall to be the child Kieran, but she approached anyway.
“Sir? Sir, can I speak to you please?”
He turned around, and she gasped in shock. It was Kieran, but this time, he was a youth in his mid-teens. He had some of the height and some of the muscle that would characterize his adulthood, but his face was still so young it could have broken her heart.
“You were right,” he said. His voice was recognizably Kieran’s, but lighter, a boy’s voice still in some ways. “You said that hate would carry me away like a river, and it did.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, fear leaping up in her throat.
There was something glassy about Kieran’s eyes, something that frightened her about the leaden way he moved.
In answer, he only pointed over the edge of the ravine.
Far below, there was a man lying dead. He had obviously met the same fate that she had barely avoided. Her stomach clenched. It was all she could do not to be sick. She forced herself to look away from the gory site, turning back to Kieran.
“Oh, Kieran, what have you done?”
“Jason and Thomas got better. They never liked me, but they left me alone. Richard was different. Sometimes it seemed like the only thing that gave Thomas life was making mine a living hell.”
Kieran shook his head as if to clear it. She wondered if he was in shock.
“Kieran, what happened?”
“I grew angry, and I told him to come out here to the cliffs. We fought. We were always fighting. It was no different from what we usually did. Today…today was different. We were so close to the edge. We were going at it hammer and tongs.”
“He fell.”
“Aye, or I pushed him.” The calm mask that was Kieran’s face ripped apart, and it was replaced for a moment with pure agony. “Gods above, I do not know. Was it chance or my own hand that slew him? Am I to be damned for this?”
“Murder is intent,” Hailey said, trying to keep her voice level. “I don’t see a murderer in front of me.”
“You are not the one who has to see me in the mirror,” he said, his voice cracking. “Oh Hailey, I did not want you to see this at all.”
Hailey looked up startled.
“You know who I am?”
Kieran’s laugh was short and curt.
“I do now, and I know this is not truly the past. When this happened in my life, I nearly threw myself over the cliff after him, but Tom Smith stopped me. He gave me money and sent me away, for he knew that Richard was well-loved in town in the same way that I was not.”
“He wouldn’t speak for you?”
“For a bastard boy who would rather practice sword drills than pound a horseshoe? Why would he? I was lucky enough that he gave me money and sent me on to what came next.”
“What did come next?” Hailey asked, her voice hollow.
Kieran shrugged, looking exhausted. He looked like a teenage boy who had not slept in a week. There were lavender circles under his vivid blue eyes. His hands shook.
“Life came next, I suppose. I went on the road, and I nearly starved to death before I found my feet. I got by on charity and sheer stubbornness. I smithied a little where I could. Eventually, I found a sword off of a dead man and set myself up as a soldier of fortune.”
The smile that he gave her was ghastly, more like a skull’s grimace than any kind of real merriment.
“How do you like me now, Hailey? There are so many things that I have never told you. There are so many men that I have been. Not all of them ar
e as kind as the face that I have shown you until now.”
“I love all of them,” she whispered. “Kieran, I swear, I love all of them, they are all yours.”
He started to reply, but then a look of sickened horror crossed his face.
“Ah gods, not you. Please, not you.”
She turned in confusion. Kieran was looking behind her, his face as white as a sheet. His eyes were glassy and afraid. The man who lay at the bottom of the gorge was floating in the air behind her. He was whole, with none of the damage in his spectral form as was seen in his body, but there was something unmistakably dead about him. He was slightly transparent, and in a strange and gruesome detail, his feet faced backward, as if they had been screwed around.
His dead eyes looked only at Kieran. Slowly, he lifted his arm to point. Miserably, Kieran nodded.
“I see you, dead man,” he said numbly. “I obey.”
“No,” Hailey said, her voice low and urgent. “You don’t have to do any of that. You don’t have to obey him. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You would never allow me to be bullied in this way. I don’t… You can’t follow a specter simply because he orders you!”
Kieran’s smile was ghastly on his face.
“The dead command me, Hailey. It is something that has always been with me. The dead haunt me. Do you think that I could have served so long in the Magus Corps without a trail of the dead behind me? Where they lead, I must follow. Where I think he is taking me now, I know it is something you need to see.”
“Me?” asked Hailey in puzzlement. “What could you possibly have to show me?”
Kieran’s voice was hollow and sad.
“You know me very little,” he said softly. “You have seen a version of me that I have improved over time, and unlike those without powers, I have a very long time to fix the things that were wrong. What Thomas says to me here is that there are some things that will never be fixed. There are some things that will never be forgiven, no matter how long I live or how many lives I have saved.”
“Kieran, I don’t believe that at all. What are you saying?”
He turned away from her. The wraith of the man who had died floated forward to lead the way.
