Vile

by Keith Crawford

  He levered his head up and looked along his body. He tried to suck in his gut. Lying, he seemed less fat. The edges of his boots framed the open door. Haf was somewhere out of sight, gnawing her fingers by the room where Derec’s body was laid out. They had escorted his corpse through town, people joining, people slipping away, a funeral train that nobody wanted to miss but where nobody wanted to be seen. Their footsteps on the cobbled streets had harmonised into a suffering march. Anton closed his eyes and let his head drop back. He could smell bread, and cooked meats, and the cheese in the larder, but he did not want to eat. To reach the wine on the rack, he would have to get up from the table.

  “My lord, do we stand?”

  Anton and his unit were holed up in a building off one of the main routes into Lutense. The dust from shattered stone floated through the window, dancing to the vibration of the North’s inexorable march. His soldiers loaded the cannon with shot to slow the advancing columns. Reinforcements, he told them, must be on their way.

  “My lord?”

  Anton thought about correcting him. They were both citizens and comrades in the revolutionary army. But if “my lord” was an outmoded affectation, why were the officers the only ones with family names and family histories? Saying they were equal didn’t make it so.

  “You’re dead, Sergeant,” Anton said.

  The soldier grinned a toothless grin.

  “More than ten years now. But did the fall kill me, or the fire?”

  They didn’t even see the weapon that collapsed the building. Trapped underneath, flames nibbling at the ruins, their screams faded then fluttered then vanished. Anton couldn’t feel his legs, couldn’t move his left arm, couldn’t turn his head. Until, miraculously, rain. At first a blessing that drove away the fire. Then a curse that left him alone in the dark.

  “We stand,” he said to the Sergeant.

  There was thumping from under the table.

  “Aye my lord, stand it is.”

  Why could he never say anything else? Why couldn’t he say, “Sod this, no reinforcements are coming, we’re not dying just to give parliament the chance to run for it.” Three days until they found him under the rubble. A whole winter in a hospital bed, treated by the merciful Northern invaders and their merciful Northern medicines. Then carted back to Shadowgate to find everything the same, his father a Lord then a citizen then a Senator and a Lord again, still the same man, the town wrecked and worthless, the farmers smelling of sheep. But Anton had changed. Work not to feel, drink not to feel, part of him always buried, a twisted leg caught in the metal trap of the past.

  A small hand tapped the top of his head. Anton woke up. The edge of the kitchen table had bitten into the back of his neck. He reached over his head and plucked the small boy from under the table.

  “Ants,” Zach said.

  Then he laughed and pushed Anton’s cheek with his palm.

  Anton flipped the toddler over onto his lap. Zach climbed over Anton’s extended left leg and tried to leap for the stone kitchen floor. Anton grasped him by the ankle. Zach squirmed, revolved, and sat.

  “No, Papa,” he said.

  He wasn’t supposed to call him Papa. Or had it merely been a statement of fact?

  “You don’t know how lucky you are, kid.”

  “That will do, Zach,” said a woman from the doorway.

  She had changed clothes since their flight from Shadowgate. The modest look of her long brown dress was belied by the neatness of the cut around the bodice, and fabric that would have looked at home on a Lutensian heiress. Her eyes were puffy from recent crying, but she held her face high, not proud, simply unashamed, and dried her hands on a cloth.

  “Mama, Ants,” Zach said.

  “Hello, Olwen,” Anton said.

  Anton pulled the boy back onto his lap. Zach writhed at first, then rubbed his forehead on the base of Anton’s chin.

  “Scratchy!”

  Anton was thinking about the smooth thighs under Olwen’s dress. How he could take her by the waist and have her, there in the doorway, her backside pressing back against him, his hands gathering up her skirts. She wouldn’t complain. She would be happy. So why didn’t he just do it?

  “Have you decided whose side you’re on?” Olwen said, still standing in the doorway.

  A small finger pushed up Anton’s nose. He jerked back, surprised, blinking, to see Zach giggling up at him from his lap.

  “Did you send the boy in first to soften me up?”

  “Zach’s two years old, and he’s your son. What makes you think anyone sends him anywhere?”

  “Does Haf know you talk to me like this?”

  Olwen glanced around, checked the wine rack to see if he was drunk, then gathered her dress and sat on the end of the table. She had to hop to make it, and her booted feet dangled in the air.

  “Derec’s death wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “I don’t. I do want a conversation with your mother.”

  Anton squeezed Zach, tickled his ribs, then let him go.

  “You should have spoken to my father, before we left,” Olwen said.

  Zach, realising he was free, made a headfirst dash for it. This time Anton caught him and lowered him by one arm to the kitchen floor. The little boy gazed at his father as if he couldn’t quite believe he had escaped.

  “Does Gwyion know who shot Lord Vile? Was it the Magistrate’s rifle?”

  Olwen hopped off the table and closed the kitchen door before the pause became unnatural.

  “The Magistrate found nothing at the mines. Tannyr Brek had her rifle. Mother went to the farm last night, and he gave it to her. When she went to the castle, Uwen took it back. Uwen shot Lord Vile.”

  “I don’t know if that’s too complicated to be the truth, or too stupid to be a lie.”

  “It was Uwen’s body we saw on the battlements. He killed himself.”

  “Why would he do that? Why would he do any of it?”

  “You know why, Anton. His father, the troubles with Gwen. Just the way he was when you got him on his own. Something like this has been coming for a long time.”

  Anton put his hands on his head and rubbed his scalp.

  “Haf went to Tannyr last night?”

  “Ugh. I don’t want to think about it.”

  On the kitchen floor, Zach, with an intently serious expression, put his hands on his head and rubbed his scalp.

  “You know Tannyr’s coming here, don’t you,” Olwen said.

  “Maybe Gwyion will talk him down.”

  “And you know what Tannyr will do when he gets here.”

  “Persephone will stop him.”

  Olwen laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh; it was the sound frustration makes when it bounces off idiocy.

  “She has more reason to hate this place than anyone,” she said.

  Anton wasn’t sure what the Garn family had done to annoy Persephone. As far as he knew Persephone hardly ever came to town, never mind the hostel. Olwen glared at him so hard he lost the thread of his thoughts.

  “I don’t owe you anything,” he said.

  “No. I got what I wanted from you.”

  Zach turned onto all fours and crawled off towards the crack in the wall.

  “Your father thought I would marry you.”

  “Well, I knew better.”

  He took another look at her. Clever, literate, pretty with the flush of someone who spent their days on the mountainside, not pale like the powdered noblewomen of the capital. Not like Elianor Paine, so busy convincing everyone she wasn’t fragile that she might snap at any moment.

  “Maybe I should.”

  “What makes you think I’d say yes? I share you with half the pretty boys and girls of Shadowgate. I might feel differently about sharing a husband. Besides, Dale Brek needs a wife.”

  Anton laughed so hard that Zach, startled, banged his head into the wall and started to cry.

>   “Dale Brek! Over Haf’s dead body.”

  A pained look creased the corner of her eye.

  “I’d make you the grand lady of Shadowgate Manor,” Anton said.

  “Fat lot of good that did the last one. Besides, Anton, if you don’t get up and do something, right now, you aren’t going to be lord of anything.”

  Zach still cried, his fists bunched and held out at his sides as his face turned more and more red. Anton swung his legs over the side of the table and swept the child up under his arm, sideways, like a bag of onions.

  “Do you still play chess, Olwen?”

  “I don’t think we have time for a game right now.”

  “I was trying to win without losing any pieces.”

  Olwen sighed and put her hand on Anton’s cheek.

  “Well, that was silly of you.”

  She lifted Zach out of Anton’s arms. The child wrapped himself around his mother and looked back over his shoulder at his father. Anton reached past them both and pulled open the kitchen door.

  “Haf!” He bellowed. “Haf, get in here.”

  Haf wobbled into sight, the next in the queue for the headmaster’s office.

  “I need five strong lads and the wagon,” he said to her. “I’m going to the mine. Is everything where I left it?”

  Haf had dark bags under her eyes and had not corrected her makeup. Anton had seen her toss back shots with patrons then walk straight back up three flights of stairs to finish the accounts. She didn’t smell like she had drunk enough to look this bad.

  “Everything is where it should be,” Olwen said. “What about Tannyr?”

  “Is Gwyion here yet?” Haf said.

  “Father won’t be joining us,” Olwen said. The words sounded hard, even to Anton.

  “What if Tannyr gets here before you get back?” Haf said.

  Anton turned Haf, as gently as he could manage, and led her into the saloon. Nana Haf’s. The Garns. Olwen. Zach. The ants walking up and down the wall. You can’t win a game of chess if you won’t sacrifice a few pieces.

  “If Tannyr gets here first, then you’re all dead. Stop wasting time and do as I ask.”

  Chapter 49

  They rode up the mountain. Nathaniel took the lead, gazing towards Demon’s Pass and the destination he had so longed to achieve. Elianor thought of her mother.

  The room had been a ballroom, before it became a hollow space populated by sheet-covered furniture. Everything in the room smelled of damp. It got in your hair and your clothes; it followed you on your way to school. Dust, immune to the hidden wet, rose into the light from the great east-facing bay window, then fell on a grand piano that was the only thing uncovered. Come mid-morning it was here you would find Marguerite Paine sitting at the piano and staring out of the window as her fingers crawled absent-mindedly along the keys. The dust was her airy shroud.

  Like Marguerite herself, the piano was of old and impeccable stock: blue eyes and ivory keys both suggested a little polish might bring them back to their imperious best. But it was years since anyone had paid to have the piano tuned. If you went searching for the bass notes, you occasionally found nothing more than a dull thunk. In her memory, a much younger Elianor watched her mother around the door and wondered how she knew which keys went thunk and which keys merely whined. Was the memory of her mother so pale because future Elianor knew what was coming?

  “What do you want?” her mother had said.

  Elianor could no longer remember what she had asked. But she remembered the ice in Marguerite’s voice, remembered the desire to run back along the empty corridors and through the void halls to the kitchen, to hide under the great wooden table where her father held court. She remembered the way her mother pushed a bloodstained handkerchief back into the sleeve of her dress, without ever turning her face from the window. She remembered asking again.

  “I’m far too busy running the house,” her mother replied, then returned to a tune that required only the high notes.

  “The servants run the house!”

  The memory, then, was from when they still had servants.

  “But somebody has to run the servants.”

  A key returned only a thunk.

  “Did you see something?”

  Nathaniel’s question snapped her from her reverie. Flecks of snow settled on her damp leather gloves and along the reins of her placid mountain horse. There was a strange intensity to the gaze that carried the question, but before she could answer, Nathaniel rode away from the path along which they had laboured the entire morning.

  “That’s where Persephone and Anton said they fought the Kindred.”

  “Shall we take a look?”

  “Does your rifle still work?” Nathaniel asked Elianor.

  She nodded. She had checked it before they left, cleaned away Uwen’s blood and tested the firing mechanism. Her pistol, even after her best efforts, would still require both hands to fire. They had also given her a short sword from the armoury. It was a clumsy weapon, an edged club compared to the fine rapier she had broken. So, she had taken two.

  “If I take position on the ridge, I can cover your approach. You go along the line of the hill, here.” She pointed out the route with her left hand. “If you have to withdraw, you can do so along the path within my line of sight.”

  “I won’t have to withdraw,” Nathaniel said.

  “Then I’ll push up and, if they are Kindred, join the attack once you’re engaged.”

  “It’s a good plan,” Nathaniel said. “But don’t shoot first. Not until you’re sure of what you’re shooting.”

  Nathaniel drew his sword and kicked his mount into a trot. Elianor slid off her horse, unwrapping her rifle as she ran up to the ridge. She rose as he descended. The snow was deeper away from the path. Her boot sank to the dormant grass beneath, slipping sideways and threatening to twist her ankle. She could hear the hoofbeats of his horse, accelerating to the target. She knelt at the high point of the ridge and charged her rifle. The snow was brilliant white. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

  At the base of the slope, crumpled bodies lay smeared against the ice. Nothing moved. She scanned the route back along the sight of her rifle. She saw Nathaniel, his sword raised, kick his horse into a gallop. She swung the rifle back to the bodies in the snow. Still no movement.

  Whatever had happened here was already over.

  Nathaniel rode his horse right into the middle of the massacre. Elianor counted five bodies. It was just as Anton and Persephone had described: five guards lost on patrol, but no sign of the sixth, the creature. Nathaniel leaned forward and poked a corpse with his sword. These were people he knew, people he had grown up with. Elianor got back to her feet and put her rifle over her shoulder. Nathaniel turned to look back along the road to Shadowgate.

  “Elianor!” he called.

  Elianor didn’t listen. Alongside the long mark in the snow where she had knelt were tracks: the large, clawed tracks of something that walked on all fours. Fresh tracks. One set, coming up the slope, were partially filled by the morning’s snowfall. Another, fresher set, led off up the mountain, towards the monastery. The Black Dog had sat, just here, and watched from the same vantage point as she. It might be watching them now.

  “Elianor!” Nathaniel shouted, turning on the spot. “Shadowgate is burning!”

  Startled, she looked back South. The castle stood silent and black.

  “Not the castle! The town!”

  Chapter 50

  The first abandonment was at the edge of town.

  Persephone rode at the head of the column, Rees to her left, Wyn to her right. After them came the angriest of the farmers, armed with improvised weapons and years of resentment. Tannyr Brek rode alongside the cart where the injured Gwyion Garn was strapped together and bleeding into the straw. The rest of the followers frayed outwards, seed blown from a dandelion, looking to see which way the wind would turn without realising that they were already caught in the breeze.

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nbsp; A sign read Shadowgate Town, hammered into the dirt then fallen to one side to form a crooked angle on the crooked hill. Here at the northern edge, the buildings looked just like farmhouse cottages, with white stone walls, dark thatched roofs, and small gardens in which the residents grew vegetables or kept a few chickens. The low road ran right through the centre of town, between the houses and past the church. The high road curved above, through the hills on the way to the mines. Both roads joined on the far side of the crescent bowl, on the opposite side of town. But Anton was not here, nor the miners, nor the mercenaries, nor any of the armed resistance they had expected as they rode from The Last Chance.

  Once they realised that there wasn’t going to be a battle, not here, not yet, and that Persephone intended to ride right through the centre of the town, the more reluctant stragglers began to change their minds. The grieving, the hurt, those with young families or who simply felt one battle per lifetime was enough, slipped away like water down a gutter. Persephone paid them no mind. She watched the houses, she watched the road, she watched every nook and cranny and rise and blind corner. The road turned a hard right at a walled orchard, the last run before the church. Persephone had an old memory of stealing apples from the trees on the other side, back when one of the Brek family had owned the house. But the apples were gone, and the trees were dead.

  The second abandonment was in front of the church.

  Persephone raised her fist to halt the column. Some people stopped, some turned, others stumbled on. Soon the column was one with the crowd. It meandered around the corner like a band of distracted ducklings, then milled about waiting for mother duck.

  “If I were Anton, I’d have archers in the church,” Rees said.

  “I would too,” Persephone said, although they both knew that wasn’t quite true. Persephone would have met the invaders at the North entrance, not left the silent town lying back with her skirts up.