The Wretched

by Brad Carsten

  She studied him for a moment as though wondering whether to trust him or not, and finally said, “it was a job he had. Ten years ago. A kingdom soldier—a Captain Arden came to see him.”

  “Captain Arden?”

  “That's all I know.” She smiled, apologetically. “It isn't much to go on, is it?”

  “Not much at all.” Captain Arden. What in Fate's name did she want with him? Was she part of the group that tried to kill them? Was she trying to find him to finish what was started so many years ago? Did she want to know where the child was? This was all making Liam very nervous. Even Quinn gave Liam a look, warning him to be careful, and his hand tightened on his spear. He still had the cursed thing from the previous night. In the light, Liam could now make out harsh patterns carved into the shaft where blood had run in and dried.

  “So, what are you going to do now?”

  “I don't know.” She looked back up the path and then up front with a lost look in her eyes. “I want to go and say goodbye to the men I lost, and then I guess I'll head back. It was a long shot anyway.”

  “Where's back?”

  “Home. Lunthorton. Thank you. And again, I'm sorry.”

  She started off again, and again Liam stopped her. “The wagon was on the Gablon road. It's this way.” He pointed in the opposite direction. The woman puzzled him. She was powerful, so terrifyingly powerful, yet she had a gentle way about her that he couldn't place.

  Her cheeks turned pink, and she turned her horse around. “Thanks.” She smiled as she passed again, giving a sheepish wave.

  Liam wondered why she was looking for his father. Did she think he took the soldiers into Gosspree-nor? It was a fair assumption, as he had often taken soldiers across the mountains, and they had come that day, seeking his services after all. No one but a handful of folks in the village would remember the details, and no one outside the village would know that Liam ended up taking them instead. No one but Captain Ardin and the few soldiers that accompanied him, but they fled with the child, so they wouldn't have said anything.

  Liam was safe for now, but if the wretched were after him, or Captain Ardin, then he had to know before they sent anyone else to the village asking questions, and someone else was hurt, or they discovered the truth. Perhaps if he knew what she wanted, he could even lead her in the wrong direction. He was playing a dangerous game, he knew that, but he had to find out what they knew, and why they were after him.

  Whatever he decided, he had to do it quickly though, as her horse was disappearing down the path.

  “I know the roads pretty well,” he shouted, before he lost his nerve. “I can take you to the Gablon road if you like?”

  “You would take me?” the woman said, in surprise, but she looked relieved. “I can’t pay you.”

  “I'm sorry,” Quinn said, holding up a finger to her. “Do you mind if I just...” He took Liam aside, and she turned away to give them some privacy.

  “Are you crazy,” he hissed. “I mean, she seems alright, when she's not killing things with her bare hands, but even pushing that aside, she said those things were after her. Do you really want a target like that on your back?”

  “After last night, I don't think we have to worry about the nightspawn.”

  “I wonder if the last group that escorted her said the same thing. And you remember how that turned out for them, don't you?” He lowered his voice even more. “And don't forget the night we found her, she wasn't exactly right in the head, if you know what I mean. We still don't know if she killed the people in the wagon.”

  “I remember, but—look, I’ll explain it all later when we're alone, but I have to know why she wanted my father.”

  “Can't you just ask her?”

  “No. It's complicated. I'll explain it all later, but we've got a full day before we have to worry about the nightspawn. We'll take her as far as Highton, and then we'll find a village—on our own, okay? It’ll be fine, I promise.” Liam sounded a lot more confident than he felt. “Besides, she overpaid us for the horse, and we don't have anywhere else to be. Consider this our first job as partners.”

  Liam set off after the woman, and Quinn made an anxious sound. “If we're going into partnership, my name is going to be first on the sign.”

  She was smiling at them pleasantly, and Liam wondered what darker and deeper things lay beyond that smile, and he suddenly wondered if he'd made the right choice.

  Chapter 13

  The wretched sat crossed legged at the edge of the valley, looking down over the wagon and the dead soldiers. Her face didn't betray what she was feeling, but she remained there a long time.

  Quinn took the opportunity to stretch out in the shade of a fir tree, his hat pulled down over his face contentedly, while Liam busied himself with unpacking and repacking his bags. He wondered if he should say something to the wretched: 'sorry for your loss,' perhaps. That would be the right thing to do, but he had no idea what was expected when it came to their kind. He finally took a seat next to her, and for a long time, neither of them said anything.

  It was surreal looking down on the dead.

  Master Chatlin, the baker, had always said that death was a brigand that sneaks up on you and when it comes it's both violent and sudden. This was violent, light failing, it was violent, but somehow, he felt detached from it all, like the bodies were statues carved from wax. He had seen too much death to allow himself to feel anything else. Not until he could mourn those he had lost.

  He thought about how close he had come to dying—twice in two days, and both times the wretched had saved him. He didn't know which felt more surreal. And now, he was traveling with her.

  “Were they close to you?” he finally said.

  The wretched shook her head. “I only met them on the trip, but you can learn a lot about people when you're with them for two weeks. Like Maud, the wagon driver. He sang constantly.” Her lips turned in a sad smile. “He had the sweetest voice, and when I asked him why he hadn't joined a travelling show, he just laughed and said that he was too large and clumsy for people to want to come out and see. He said that was for pretty people, like Brayant.” She gestured to a body facing away from them. Everything below his waist was missing, and for the first time, that sadness touched her eyes. “They teased him constantly about his looks. They said his face was too smooth to be carrying a sword, and that he should be working in perfumes or selling fine linen to nobles. They thought that was so funny. Then there was Corwin.” She pointed to a body pinned under the wagon. Blood crusted out his nose and eyes and down his chin like war paint. “He never said much to me, but he carried a child's book with him, and he would sit with it by the firelight every night trying to learn to read, and the others all thought he was putting on airs, like people shouldn't try to better themselves.”

  She worked her way through each person there, and then those that weren't, and Liam left her to speak.

  The wagon driver had been snatched right off the wagon. “He was talking to me through the front hatch”—she had a faraway look in her eyes—“and... It all happened so quickly. I wish I could honor him with the others, but he simply disappeared.”

  “You can still honor him,” Liam said, “by remembering him.”

  He drew his father's small wooden carving out of his pocket, which he had done many times over the last few years. Seeing it now, hit him with a range of emotions, from resounding sadness and loss to a distant smidgen of hope.

  “It helps to store up good memories, like Master Maud’s singing.”

  The wretched was looking at him, but he didn't meet her eyes.

  He turned the carving over in his hands examining it as he had hundreds of times before. “My father tried his hand at whittling once. He was a solemn man that wouldn't suffer fools, and yet he always seemed to end up escorting the most—curious people, and they always loved to talk. He said his evenings could get as long as the Anjaro mountains were high.” The sculpture was supposed to be of his mother, but it looked
more like a lizard with a big square head, and jug handles for ears. His father had tossed it out when he got home, and Liam promptly rescued it.

  “He was one of the best trackers I knew, but”—Liam laughed with a heavy heart—“he made a terrible artist.”

  The wretched put her hand on his. “I'm sorry you lost him.”

  Liam thought about his father, and the days that followed, as they all waited for him, and the merchant, to return from what should have been a short journey through the Kullburn valley, and then the realisation, as the days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, that he wasn't coming back.

  Liam had spent three months walking those mountains, looking for him and had finally come across the merchant's body huddled against a rock overhang. He had been killed by exposure, with the winter snow preserving his flesh, but of Liam's father, he was nowhere to be found.

  The overhang was some distance off the path, where they shouldn't have gone, and all Liam could think was that the snow had thrown them off course. Like Liam, his father had a way with directions, but the gift wasn't as strong especially in bad weather.

  That's when he first realised that his father may not be coming back, but yet, he often found himself in his field looking towards the distant mountains. Perhaps he was hoping to see the man riding up the path on Trapper, his faithful shaggy mare, with his ridiculous travelling hat and that massive grin on his face. He never did arrive, and Liam had accepted that he never would, but that ever small ember of hope was perhaps the biggest reason he had remained in Brigwell for so long. If his father was ever to return, Liam wanted to be there when he did.

  Liam squeezed her hand and then remembered what she was and pulled his hand away quickly. He felt bad and covered the movement by wrapping the sculpture in a cloth and slipping it away in his pocket.

  If she noticed, she didn't say anything.

  She stood, dusting off her dress. “I think it's time to see them on their way. I just need to get some things from the carriage first.”

  “I'll help move them closer, if you like?” Perhaps that would make up for pulling away from her so abruptly.

  She moved some of her clothes and other possessions into the panniers, and Liam noticed her wrapping up a glass bottle of something. It swirled with a blue and white light as though alive. He had heard talk of an elixir that could restore a wretched’s energy, but he'd always thought that was a tale grown out of fear and spread around taverns at night. He hoped it was so. Their energy drain was the only thing keeping his fear of her reined in.

  After that, he tried to keep his eyes away from what she was doing, before he lost his nerve entirely and left her behind with the carriage and her cursed elixirs.

  He dragged what he could of the bodies around the wagon, saying prayers for those he had lost back home.

  When he went to gather branches to pile on top of them, the wretched told him not to worry, and as they rode away from the valley, flames, twice as high as a barn, exploded behind them.

  Quinn nearly fell out of his saddle, and Liam's horse took off up the path.

  The wretched didn't flinch, she didn't look back, and as they rode away, the light of the fire blazing behind them, consuming the bodies and the carriage and the soil, Quinn met Liam's eyes and mouthed a curse that wasn't proper in the company of a lady.

  In his head, Liam cursed right back with words that were twice as improper.

  ***

  The rain had doused the flames, leaving blackened shells where houses used to be. People milled around the village in a daze dragging out the last of the husks through the mud, or just standing around afraid to head back alone to their farms after what happened. The-one-of-many had seen it many times before. The villagers would lay out their dead and light their pyres ready to receive the gifts before the bodies could be buried. Archaic superstition lasted a long time in these off-of-the-trail villages. The-one-of-many wanted to laugh. He was in a good mood. Being around the dead always brought the best out of him. There was something soothing, spiritual even about the feel of cold flesh. And the eyes, many compared them to the windows of the souls, but in death, those windows opened, and they became the windows to something far more spectacular. One of the bodies at his feet hadn't been covered properly and a hand had slipped out, lying palm up. He wanted to pick it up and smell it. Death brought the sweetest fragrance. He'd get naked and rub his whole body full of that scent. It brought his masters closer. Through death, he could feel them. But it wasn't just the dead. There were the blighted as well.

  Many, many husks, sent to kill her, but they had underestimated her power. He wouldn't make the same mistake.

  The villagers took the carcasses about a mile outside the village to burn. The smoke, and bits of ash could be seen, blowing across the road for miles, and the poignant smell carried down the mountain.

  In his current form, he was unremarkable like anyone else there. No one paid him much heed as he hobbled, propped up on an old gnarled staff, through the gate into the village. People seldom did when they were bathing in their own misery. As word got out, family and neighbors from nearby towns would descend like moths to a lantern to offer lip service, while gathering tidbits like beggars gathering crumbs under a laden table. And once they had crammed enough down their gullets, they would head home altogether satisfied. All the way home, they'd be regurgitating it over in their minds, sucking out the marrow, and looking forward to a night in the tavern where they could share all the juicy details, and all eyes would be on them. It was altogether lovely to see.

  He lifted his nose and sniffed. Beneath the sweet fragrance of death was something else: the smell of greed. Someone was turning the attack for their own purposes. That was something else he'd seen many times before. And why not? A quick knife between the ribs, and who would notice when so many others were falling. Someone was turning this in their favour, and The-one-of-many could use a man like that. He touched the coins in his pocket and smiled. People like that were easy to buy. He just needed a direction and he'd find her scent. That madness bubbling beneath her mind was easy to track, and by the afternoon he'd have her.

  ***

  They arrived in Highton by late that afternoon. The town supplied berry mead to much of the kingdom, and the final stretch took them through miles of lush Goatberry groves. The branches hung over the path, laden with fruit, and as they passed underneath, Liam stood in his saddle to pick one. The large berry was soft and ripe for harvest, and as he bit into it, the purple juice squirted down his fingers.

  The wretched looked back at him and smiled, and he tossed one to her.

  “I don't think we’re allowed to eat these. Unless you want the farmer coming after us, or setting his dogs on us?”

  “Of course we can,” Quinn said, reaching for some of his own. “So long as they don't catch you.”

  The wretched glanced around to make sure no one was watching, but she hadn't eaten for a while, and her groaning stomach won out over her guilty conscience.

  She bit into it, and juice squirted down her chin. “Oh my, that's good.” She shut her eyes in pleasure. “You won't believe how long it's been since I've had one of these. They're exactly as I remembered and yet so much sweeter.” She smiled, with her teeth stained purple.”

  “It's been awhile since you've had anything to eat. Here.” Liam tossed another one over. “Have some more before you end up floating up off your horse.”

  She finished the first one and attacked the second ravenously.

  Liam plucked a few more for her, amazed at how quickly she was getting through them and how ordinary it all seemed.

  After countless stories about the wretched, he had somehow never pictured them enjoying something as ordinary as fruit. If he didn't think about what she was, he could almost believe she was just another traveller, if one of a higher standing.

  Liam realised he still didn't know her name, and yet, he was hesitant to ask, because he didn't want to get too familiar with her. It may
be better to keep her at arm's length. You weren't supposed to speak to a wretched. When one was around, you were supposed to lock your doors and hide under covers, nevermind ask them their names.

  He had to practice the question a few times in his mind, before he finally settled on asking her.

  “Kaylyn,” she said, holding out a grubby hand. Even that seemed refined. She carried herself like someone born into wealth. She realised her hand was dirty, and she sputtered an apology and looked for something to wipe it on, but Liam took her hand anyway.

  “Kaylyn. Like the princess, right?”

  “Yes,”—she looked abashed—“just like the princess.”

  “It's a nice name.”

  “It's a surprisingly common name—I've discovered.”

  “That tends to happen with the royal names. My mother wanted to name me Thomwyn, but my father wouldn't hear of it.”

  “Oh? Why's that?”

  “He couldn't stand the royal family.”

  “Really? Didn't they provide a good life for you?”

  “Oh yes, they ran the kingdom well, but he was a tracker, and his journeys often took him outside the kingdom, and he’d get to see how everyone else was living. The kingdom would move in and take the best land and the ports, and anyone with any skill, and they were left to pick up the pieces. If an army grew too large, the kingdom would sweep through, and so other kingdoms never had enough soldiers to protect their own borders, and so the villages were often pillaged with terrible things happening to the women and children. We may have had a good life, but everyone else suffered because of it. His father, my grandfather, grew up before Brigwell was swallowed into the kingdom, and our village was one of those that was often attacked. You saw the wall around it, right? That's what most villages look like outside the Kingdom.” Liam had learnt a few years back, that when he was five, his father had purposefully taken him out of the village when the assessors arrived, so that he wouldn't be associated with the kingdom. Liam was so upset when he heard that, he didn't even say goodbye to his father the night of that final trip. Liam was so angry at the time, but now he would do anything to have said goodbye.