by Paula Guran
“Is she dangerous?” Lealez said.
“Not anymore,” Bet said.
Together, they hauled the body through the undergrowth, avoiding the snapping jaws of swamp dogs and startling a pack of rats as big as Bet’s head. Bet was aware of Hanere’s stinking body, the slightly swelling flesh. When they dumped her into the hill of ants, Bet stood and watched them devour the woman she had spent half her life either chasing or romancing.
“Are you all right?” Lealez said.
“No,” Bet said. “Never have been.”
Mekdas was next.
While they stood watching the ants devour him, Lealez glanced over at Bet and said, “I know this is a hard profession, but there’s honor in it. It does a public good.”
“No, we just murder people.”
“We eliminate threats to—”
“Can you even say it? Can you say, ‘We murder people.’ ”
“This is a ridiculous conversation.”
“On that, we can agree,” Bet said. She glanced over at Lealez. “Something I noticed back there, in the Copse of Screaming Corpses. You never showed me your credentials.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
Bet grabbed per arm and yanked back per sleeve before Lealez could pull away. There was the double ivy circle of the order, but no triangles.
Bet released her, disgusted. “What happened to being best in your class? Apprehending three Plague Givers? That’s what your duplicitous friend Abrimet said, wasn’t it?”
“I came out here to make a name for myself.”
Bet stared down at the little pan, and though she wanted to hate Lealez more than anything, she had to admit, “I suspect you have indeed done that.”
VIII.
Lealez smoothed per coat and mopped the sweat from per brow. The great Summoning Circle of the Contagion College was stuffed to bursting with fellow Plague Hunters. The map case Lealez carried over per shoulder felt heavier and heavier as the afternoon wore on to dusk. The initial round of questions had worn down into a second and then third round where Lealez felt per was simply repeating perself. Not a single apprentice or hunter with fewer than three triangles was allowed into the space. By that measure, Lealez wouldn’t have been able to come to per own trial just a few days ago. Lealez swallowed hard. In front of per lay the relics per and Bet had spent so much effort retrieving.
Lealez knew it was a betrayal, but per also knew there was no triangle on per arm yet, and this was the only way.
The coven of judges peered down at Lealez from the towering amber dais. The air above them swarmed with various plagues and contagions, all of them meant to counteract any assaults coming from outside the theater. But the swarm still made Lealez’s nose run and eyes water. Lealez felt like a leaky sponge.
“Where are the bodies?” Judge Horven asked, waggling her large mustache.
“We disposed of them,” Lealez said. “Elzabet was . . . understandably concerned that Hanere Gozene could rise again. As she had risen once before.”
“Then you have no proof,” Judge Horven said.
Lealez gestured expansively to the relics. “I have brought back the relics that Elzabet Addisalam and Keleb Ozdanam used to defeat Hanere Gozene,” Lealez said. “And you have the testimony of the two of us of course.”
Judge Rosteb, the eldest judge, held up their long-fingered hands and barked out a long laugh. “We are former Plague Hunters, all,” they said. “We know that testimony between partners can be . . . suspect.”
“I stand before you with all I have learned,” Lealez said. “Abrimet was unfortunately lost to us along the way, through no fault of either Elzabet or myself. Their death was necessary to our goal. I regret it. You all know that Abrimet was my mentor. But we did as we were instructed. We stopped Hanere and the other two Plague Givers. I retrieved the relics. Both of those things cannot be contested. Because even if, as you say, you see no body, I can tell you this—you will never see Hanere again upon this soil. That will be proof enough of my accomplishments.”
The judges conferred while Lealez sweated it out below them. Not for the first time, Lealez wished they had let Bet inside, but that was impossible, of course. Bet had murdered Abrimet, and done a hundred other things that were highly unorthodox in the apprehension of a Plague Giver. The judges would already worry that Bet had been a terrible influence on Lealez. Lealez would be lucky to get through this with per own head intact. At least Lealez would die in clean clothes, after a nice cold bath, which was the first thing per had done on entering the city.
Finally, the judges called Lealez forward.
“Hold out your arm,” Judge Rosteb said.
IX.
Bet waited for Lealez outside the great double doors of the theater. Plague Hunters streamed past Bet as they were released from the meeting, all pointedly ignoring her. No one liked a woman who could kill her own family, no matter how great a sorcerer she was. The better she was, the more they hated her.
And there was Lealez. Lealez walked out looking dazed. Bet frowned at per empty hands. Lealez had gone in with the relics to make per case for destroying them, but Bet had a good idea of what had happened to them.
“Let’s see them,” Bet said, and snatched Lealez’s arm. They had tattooed the mark of three successful hunts there. Bet snorted in disgust. “All three, then. You really learned nothing at all, did you? I could kill you too, but there are hundreds, thousands, just like you, crawling all over each other to do the bidding of the City Founders. You’re like a hydra, spitting up three more scaly heads for every one I hack off.”
“You don’t know how difficult it is to rise up through the college now,” Lealez said.
“You kids talk like it was any easier. It wasn’t. We got asked to make the same stupid choices. They wanted the relics when Keleb and I came back, too. But we held out.”
“You were already famous! Your reputation was secured!”
“Shit talk,” Bet said. “You’re just not tough enough to give up your career so young. I get that. But think on this. It’s easy to destroy a country with plague, but how do you save your own from it? You’ll all unleash something in the far empires and think we’re safe, but we aren’t, not with a thousand relics. All killing gets you is more killing. You pick up a machete, kid, and you’ll be picking it up your whole life.”
“None of it matters now,” Lealez said, and sniffed. Lealez pulled a cigarette from a silver case, but for all per insouciance, Bet noted that per hands trembled. “They have the relics. What they do with them now doesn’t concern me.”
“Dumb kid,” Bet said.
Lealez lit per cigarette with a clunky old lighter from per bag, something that would have weighed per down by an extra pound in the swamp. Lealez took a long draw. “I gave them the sword and the shield,” per said, “just so you know.”
“The . . . sword and shield. That’s what you gave them?”
“Yeah, like I said.” Lealez pulled a leather map case from per shoulder. “Here’s the thing I promised you,” Lealez said.
“I see,” Bet said. She took the case from per. “You know the relics don’t work unless they’re all together?”
“Don’t know about that,” Lealez said. “I’m just a dumb kid, remember?”
“I’m sorry,” Bet said.
Lealez shrugged. “Just get out of here. You aren’t suited to the city.”
Bet tipped her head at Lealez. “I don’t want us to meet again,” Bet said. “No offense meant.”
“None taken,” Lealez said. “If we meet again it means I’m not doing my job. I know how to play this game too, Bet.” Lealez handed Bet the lighter and walked back into the college.
Bet pocketed it and watched per go. Lealez did not look back. When Lealez opened the great door of the College to go back inside, per hand no longer trembled. That pan was going to make a good Hunter someday, like it or not.
Bet shouldered the map case and began her own long walk across the city. It took n
early two hours to cross the dim streets, navigating her way based on which roads had functioning gaslights. She went all the way to the gates of the city and into the damp mud of the swamp before she risked opening the map case.
Inside, the cloak artifact was rolled up dry and tight. Bet rented a skiff upriver and spent the next week trudging home on foot and by whatever craft she could beg a ride up on.
When it came time to do what needed to be done, she wasn’t sure she could do it. What if there was another Hanere? But so long as the relics existed, the world wasn’t safe.
Bet burned the cloak there in the canopy of the cypress trees while swamp dogs snarled and barked in the distance. She watched the smoke coil up through the dense leaves and moss, and let out a breath.
It was decided. For better or worse.
X.
She had retired to the swamp because she liked the color. The color was the same, but she was not.
Bet leaned over the dim light of her firefly lantern, pushing her stuffed hydra into its glow. She eased the big sewing needle through its skin with her rough, thick fingers. On the shelves behind her were dozens of cast-off hydras, each defective in some way that she could not name. The College knew where she was now, and it made her work more difficult to concentrate on in the many long months back at her damp home. She sweated heavily, as the sun had only just set, and the air would keep its heat for a long time yet. She was tired, but no more than the day before, or the day before that. She had made her choices.
Mhev snorted softly in his basket with a litter of four baby swamp rodents, all mewing contentedly out here in the black. She wished she could join them, but her work was not done.
Outside, the insects grew quiet. Bet had been waiting for them. The waiting was the worst part. The rest was much easier. Whether it was child or Hunter or Giver or beast who stilled their call, she had made her choice about how to defend her peace long before, when she first condemned Hanere to death. She had already killed everything they both loved then.
That left her here.
Bet took hold of the machete at her elbow, the machete she would be taking into her hands for the rest of her life, and opened the door.
