William Ann shook with a seizure as she rasped, drawing in breaths and clawing at Silence’s arms. The shades came by the dozens, huddling around the two of them, smelling the blood. The flesh.
Silence pulled her daughter close. She should have gone for the knife after all; it wouldn’t heal William Ann, but she could have at least fought with it.
Without that, without anything, she failed. Grandmother had been right all along.
“Hush now, my dear one . . . ” Silence whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. “Be not afraid.”
Shades came at her frail barrier, throwing up sparks, making Silence open her eyes. They backed away, then others came, beating against the silver, their red eyes illuminating writhing black forms.
“Night comes upon us . . . ” Silence whispered, choking at the words. “ . . . but sunlight will break.”
William Ann arched her back, then fell still.
“Sleep now . . . my . . . my dear one . . . let your tears fade. Darkness surrounds us, but someday . . . we’ll wake . . . ”
So tired. I shouldn’t have let her come.
If she hadn’t, Chesterton would have gotten away from her, and she’d have probably died to the shades then. William Ann and Sebruki would have become slaves to Theopolis, or worse.
No choices. No way out.
“Why did you send us here?” she screamed, looking up, past hundreds of glowing red eyes. “What is the point?”
There was no answer. There was never an answer.
Yes, that was light ahead; she could see it through the low tree branches in front of her. She was only a few yards from the waystop. She would die, like Grandmother had, mere paces from her home.
She blinked, cradling William Ann as the tiny silver barrier failed.
That . . . that branch just in front of her. It had such a very odd shape. Long, thin, no leaves. Not like a branch at all. Instead, like . . .
Like a crossbow bolt.
It had lodged into the tree after being fired from the waystop earlier in the day. She remembered facing down that bolt earlier, staring at its reflective end.
Silver.
Silence Montane crashed through the back door of the waystop, hauling a desiccated body behind her. She stumbled into the kitchen, barely able to walk, and dropped the silver-tipped bolt from a withered hand.
Her skin continued to pull tight, her body shriveling. She had not been able to avoid withering, not when fighting so many Shades. The crossbow bolt had merely cleared a path, allowing her to push forward in a last, frantic charge.
She could barely see. Tears streamed from her clouded eyes. Even with the tears, her eyes felt as dry as if she had been standing in the wind for an hour while holding them wide open. Her lids refused to blink, and she couldn’t move her lips.
She had . . . powder. Didn’t she?
Thought. Mind. What?
She moved without thought. Jar on the windowsill. In case of broken circle. She unscrewed the lid with fingers like sticks. Seeing them horrified a distant part of her mind.
Dying. I’m dying.
She dunked the jar of silver powder in the water cistern and pulled it out, then stumbled to William Ann. She felt to her knees beside the girl, spilling much of the water. The rest she dumped on her daughter’s face with a shaking arm.
Please. Please.
Darkness.
“We were sent here to be strong,” Grandmother said, standing on the cliff edge overlooking the waters. Her whited hair curled in the wind, writhing, like the wisps of a shade.
She turned back to Silence, and her weathered face was covered in droplets of water from the crashing surf below. “The God Beyond sent us. It’s part of the plan.”
“It’s so easy for you to say that, isn’t it?” Silence spat. “You can fit anything into that nebulous plan. Even the destruction of the world itself.”
“I won’t hear blasphemy from you, child.” A voice like boots stepping in gravel. She walked toward Silence. “You can rail against the God Beyond, but it will change nothing. William was a fool and an idiot. You are better off. We are Forescouts. We survive. We will be the ones to defeat the Evil, someday.” She passed Silence by.
Silence had never seen a smile from Grandmother, not since her husband’s death. Smiling was wasted energy. And love . . . love was for the people back in Homeland. The people who’d died to the Evil.
“I’m with child,” Silence said.
Grandmother stopped. “William?”
“Who else?”
Grandmother continued on.
“No condemnations?” Silence asked, turning, folding her arms.
“It’s done,” Grandmother said. “We are Forescouts. If this is how we must continue, so be it. I’m more worried about the waystop, and meeting our payments to those damn forts.”
I have an idea for that, Silence thought, considering the lists of bounties she’d begun collecting. Something even you wouldn’t dare. Something dangerous. Something unthinkable.
Grandmother reached the woods and looked at Silence, scowled, then pulled on her hat and stepped into the trees.
“I will not have you interfering with my child,” Silence called after her. “I will raise my own as I will!”
Grandmother vanished into the shadows.
Please. Please.
“I will!”
I won’t lose you. I won’t . . .
Silence gasped, coming awake and clawing at the floorboards, staring upward.
Alive. She was alive!
Dob the stableman knelt beside her, holding the jar of powdered silver. She coughed, lifting fingers—plump, the flesh restored—to her neck. It was hale, though ragged from the flakes of silver that had been forced down her throat. Her skin was dusted with black bits of ruined silver.
“William Ann!” she said, turning.
The child lay on the floor beside the door. William Ann’s left side, where she’d first touched the shade, was blackened. Her face wasn’t too bad, but her hand was a withered skeleton. They’d have to cut that off. Her leg looked bad too. Silence couldn’t tell how bad without tending the wounds.
“Oh, child . . . ” Silence knelt beside her.
But the girl breathed in and out. That was enough, all things considered.
“I tried,” Dob said. “But you’d already done what could be done.”
“Thank you,” Silence said. She turned to the aged man, with his high forehead and dull eyes.
“Did you get him?” Dob asked.
“Who?”
“The bounty.”
“I . . . yes, I did. But I had to leave him.”
“You’ll find another,” Dob said in his monotone, climbing to his feet. “The Fox always does.”
“How long have you known?”
“I’m an idiot, mam,” he said. “Not a fool.” He bowed his head to her, then walked away, slump-backed as always.
Silence climbed to her feet, then groaned, picking up William Ann. She lifted her daughter to the rooms above and saw to her.
The leg wasn’t as bad as Silence had feared. A few of the toes would be lost, but the foot itself was hale enough. The entire left side of William Ann’s body was blackened, as if burned. That would fade, with time, to gray.
Everyone who saw her would know exactly what had happened. Many men would never touch her, fearing her taint. This might just doom her to a life alone.
I know a little about such a life, Silence thought, dipping a cloth into the water bin and washing William Ann’s face. The youth would sleep through the day. She had come very close to death, to becoming a shade herself. The body did not recover quickly from that.
Of course, Silence had been close to that too. She, however, had been there before. Another of Grandmother’s preparations. Oh, how she hated that woman. Silence owed who she was to how that training toughened her. Could she be thankful for Grandmother and hateful, both at once?
Silence finished washing William Ann, then dressed her
in a soft nightgown and left her in her bunk. Sebruki still slept off the draught William Ann had given her.
So she went downstairs to the kitchen to think difficult thoughts. She’d lost the bounty. The shades would have had at that body; the skin would be dust, the skill blackened and ruined. She had no way to prove that she’d taken Chesterton.
She settled against the kitchen table and laced her hands before her. She wanted to have at the whiskey instead, to dull the horror of the night.
She thought for hours. Could she pay Theopolis off some way? Borrow from someone else? Who? Maybe find another bounty. But so few people came through the waystop these days. Theopolis had already given her warning, with his writ. He wouldn’t wait more than a day or two for payment before claiming the waystop as his own.
Had she really gone through so much, still to lose?
Sunlight fell on her face and a breeze from the broken window tickled her cheek, waking her from her slumber at the table. Silence blinked, stretching, limbs complaining. Then she sighed, moving to the kitchen counter. She’d left out all of the materials from the preparations last night, her clay bowls thick with glowpaste that still shone faintly. The silver-tipped crossbow bolt still lay by the back door. She’d need to clean up and get breakfast ready for her few guests. Then, think of some way to . . .
The back door opened and someone stepped in.
. . . to deal with Theopolis. She exhaled softly, looking at him in his clean clothing and condescending smile. He tracked mud onto her floor as he entered. “Silence Montane. Nice morning, hmmm?”
Shadows, she thought. I don’t have the mental strength to deal with him right now.
He moved to close the window shutters.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Hmmm? Haven’t you warned me before that you loathe that people might see us together? That they might get a hint that you are turning in bounties to me? I’m just trying to protect you. Has something happened? You look awful, hmmm?”
“I know what you did.”
“You do? But, see, I do many things. About what do you speak?”
Oh, how she’d like to cut that grin from his lips and cut out his throat, stomp out that annoying Lastport accent. She couldn’t. He was just so blasted good at acting. She had guesses, probably good ones. But no proof.
Grandmother would have killed him right then. Was she so desperate to prove him wrong that she’d lose everything?
“You were in the Forests,” Silence said. “When Red surprised me at the bridge, I assumed that the thing I’d heard—rustling in the darkness—had been him. It wasn’t. He implied he’d been waiting for us at the bridge. That thing in the darkness, it was you. You shot him with the crossbow to jostle him, make him draw blood. Why, Theopolis?”
“Blood?” Theopolis said. “In the night? And you survived? You’re quite fortunate, I should say. Remarkable. What else happened?”
She said nothing.
“I have come for payment of debt,” Theopolis said. “You have no bounty to turn in then, hmmm? Perhaps we will need my document after all. So kind of me to bring another copy. This really will be wonderful for us both. Do you not agree?”
“Your feet are glowing.”
Theopolis hesitated, then looked down. There, the mud he’d tracked in shone very faintly blue in the light of the glowpaste remnants.
“You followed me,” she said. “You were there last night.”
He looked up at her with a slow, unconcerned expression. “And?” He took a step forward.
Silence backed away, her heel hitting the wall behind her. She reached around, taking out the key and unlocking the door behind her. Theopolis grabbed her arm, yanking her away as she pulled open the door.
“Going for one of your hidden weapons?” he asked with a sneer. “The crossbow you keep hidden on the pantry shelf? Yes, I know of that. I’m disappointed, Silence. Can’t we be civil?
“I will never sign your document, Theopolis,” she said, then spat at his feet. “I would sooner die, I would sooner be put out of house and home. You can take the waystop by force, but I will not serve you. You can be damned, for all I care, you bastard. You—”
He slapped her across the face. A quick, but unemotional gesture. “Oh, do shut up.”
She stumbled back.
“Such dramatics, Silence. I can’t be the only one to wish you lived up to your name, hmmm?”
She licked her lip, feeling the pain of his slap. She lifted her hand to her face. A single drop of blood colored her fingertip when she pulled it away.
“You expect me to be frightened?” Theopolis asked. “I know we are safe in here.”
“City fool,” she whispered, then flipped the drop of blood at him. It hit him on the cheek. “Always follow the Simple Rules. Even when you think you don’t have to. And I wasn’t opening the pantry, as you thought.”
Theopolis frowned, then glanced over at the door she had opened. The door into the small, old shrine. Her grandmother’s shrine to the God Beyond.
The bottom of the door was rimmed in silver.
Red eyes opened in the air behind Theopolis, a jet-black form coalescing in the shadowed room. Theopolis hesitated, then turned.
He didn’t get to scream as the shade took his head in its hands and drew his life away. It was a newer shade, its form still strong, despite the writhing blackness of its clothing. A tall woman, hard of features, with curling hair. Theopolis opened his mouth, then his face withered away, eyes sinking into his head.
“You should have run, Theopolis,” Silence said.
His head began to crumble. His body collapsed to the floor.
“Hide from the green eyes, run from the red,” Silence said, taking out her silver dagger. “Your rules, Grandmother.”
The shade turned to her. Silence shivered, looking into those dead, glassy eyes of a matriarch she loathed and loved.
“I hate you,” Silence said. “Thank you for making me hate you.” She retrieved the silver-tipped crossbow bolt and held it before her, but the shade did not strike. Silence edged around, forcing the shade back. It floated away from her, back into the shrine lined with silver at the bottom of its three walls, where Silence had trapped it years ago.
Her heart pounding, Silence closed the door, completing the barrier, and locked it again. No matter what happened, that shade left Silence alone. Almost, she thought it remembered. And almost, Silence felt guilty for trapping that soul inside the small closet for all these years.
Silence found Theopolis’s hidden cave after six hours of hunting.
It was about where she’d expected it to be, in the hills not far from the Old Bridge. It included a silver barrier. She could harvest that. Good money there.
Inside the small cavern, she found Chesterton’s corpse, which Theopolis had dragged to the cave while the Shades killed Red and then hunted Silence. I’m so glad, for once, you were a greedy man, Theopolis.
She would have to find someone else to start turning in bounties for her. That would be difficult, particularly on short notice. She dragged the corpse out and threw it over the back of Theopolis’s horse. A short hike took her back to the road, where she paused, then walked up and located Red’s fallen corpse, withered down to just bones and clothing.
She fished out her grandmother’s dagger, scored and blackened from the fight. It fit back into the sheath at her side. She trudged, exhausted, back to the waystop and hid Chesterton’s corpse in the cold cellar out back of the stable, beside where she’d put Theopolis’s remains. She hiked back into the kitchen. Beside the shrine’s door—where her grandmother’s dagger had once hung—she had placed the silver crossbow bolt that Sebruki had unknowingly sent her.
What would the fort authorities say when she explained Theopolis’s death to them? Perhaps she could claim to have found him like that . . .
She paused, then smiled.
“Looks like you’re lucky, friend,” Daggon said, sipping at his beer. “The Wh
ite Fox won’t be looking for you any time soon.”
The spindly man, who still insisted his name was Earnest, hunkered down a little farther in his seat.
“How is it you’re still here?” Daggon asked. “I traveled all the way to Lastport. I hardly expected to find you here on my path back.”
“I hired on at a homestead nearby,” said the slender-necked man. “Good work, mind you. Solid work.”
“And you pay each night to stay here?”
“I like it. It feels peaceful. The homesteads don’t have good silver protection. They just . . . let the shades move about. Even inside.” The man shuttered.
Daggon shrugged, lifting his drink as Silence Montane limped by. Yes, she was a healthy-looking woman. He really should court her, one of these days. She scowled at his smile and dumped his plate in front of him.
“I think I’m wearing her down,” Daggon said, mostly to himself, as she left.
“You will have to work hard,” Earnest said. “Seven men have proposed to her during the last month.”
“What!”
“The reward!” the spindly man said. “The one for bringing in Chesterton and his men. Lucky woman, Silence Montane, finding the White Fox’s lair like that.”
Daggon dug into his meal. He didn’t much like how things had turned out. Theopolis, that dandy had been the White Fox all along? Poor Silence. How had it been, stumbling upon his cave and finding him inside, all withered away?
“They say that this Theopolis spent his last strength killing Chesterton,” Earnest said, “then dragging him into the hole. Theopolis withered before he could get to his silver powder. Very like the White Fox, always determined to get the bounty, no matter what. We won’t soon see a hunter like him again.”
“I suppose not,” Daggon said, though he’d much rather that the man had kept his skin. Now who would Daggon tell his tales about? He didn’t fancy paying for his own beer.
Nearby, a greasy-looking fellow rose from his meal and shuffled out of the front door, looking half-drunk already, though it was only noon.
Some people. Daggon shook his head. “To the White Fox.” he said, raising his drink.
Earnest clinked his mug to Daggon’s. “The White Fox, meanest bastard the Forests have ever known.”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition Page 31
