Unclean

by A. M. Manay

  Unclean

  The Hexborn Chronicles Book 2

  A.M. Manay

  Pythoness Press

  Unclean

  (The Hexborn Chronicles, Book 2)

  by A.M. Manay

  Cover Design by Eeva Lancaster, thebookkhaleesi.com

  Map Illustration by Taran Lopez

  Copyright 2018 © A.M. Manay

  Pythoness Press

  Livermore, California

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  For my mother,

  Anne C. Huss

  Acknowledgments

  I am so grateful for my beta readers who provide much valuable feedback and encouragement. I also thank my proofreader, Emily Hainsworth, whose insight and attention to detail improve all of my books. I thank my cover designer, Eeva Lancaster, whose creativity helps bring my characters to life. And I thank my family, especially my husband and my son, for their unwavering support.

  Contents

  A Full Color Map of the Kingdom of Bryn and Surrounding Areas

  A Black and White Map of the Kingdom of Bryn and Surrounding Areas

  1. If You’d Ever Met One

  2. The End of the Rope

  3. Worse than Mining in the Teeth

  4. A Dangerous Creature

  5. Save Your Soul

  6. Crown Jewel

  7. The Dog Off Its Chain

  8. On Your Head

  9. Have It Your Way

  10. Husband

  11. One Thousand Suns

  12. How About Honey?

  13. Freehold

  14. Stay Down

  15. Home

  16. Both Things

  17. Royal Blood and Feral Bone

  18. Too Young

  19. Soup

  20. Winter Solstice

  21. A Mirror

  22. A Toy

  23. Out of Scraps

  24. Long Live the Queen

  25. Songs and Stories

  26. A Queen Worth Fighting For

  27. Born to Do

  28. For Bryn

  29. Our Triumphal Return

  Cast of Characters

  Index of Magic

  A Note from the Author

  About the Author

  A Full Color Map of the Kingdom of Bryn and Surrounding Areas

  A Black and White Map of the Kingdom of Bryn and Surrounding Areas

  If You’d Ever Met One

  “Drink it down. I know it’s vile, but drink it all if you want to live.”

  Shiloh cradled Hedsin’s head with her silk-clad forearm and held the cup to his cracked lips. The farmer looked up at her with skeptical eyes, but he did as she had bid him, a little of the disgusting concoction dripping onto Shiloh’s glove.

  “Might’ve been kinder to slit my throat, my lady,” he coughed.

  She smiled down at him indulgently, but grim lines framed her pink eyes. “Now, now. In a few days, when you’re bouncing that new grandson on your knee, you won’t feel the same, I’ll warrant.”

  Shiloh straightened her back and squared her shoulders. “I must get on to the next afflicted house,” she told Hedsin’s wife, Deenah. “Make sure you and yours keep your charms pinned to your clothes at all times, lest this spread to the rest of you. At. All. Times.” She held the woman’s eyes with stern resolve.

  “Yes, my lady,” Deenah replied, bobbing her head and wringing her hands. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “You are most welcome.” Shiloh held out three ribbons and pulled her away from her husband’s sickbed. She lowered her voice to continue, “Now, tie the black one on the door if he dies. The red one if someone else shows symptoms, so I can bring the medicine. The white when he recovers. That means no fever for twenty-four hours.”

  Deenah nodded. “How many are sick in the village?” she asked anxiously.

  Shiloh took a deep breath. “Three dozen. Plus five in the monastery, and four in the castle. A dozen or so in the barracks, maybe more. I hear it’s terrible in Gerne. That’s probably where it started. I had a letter from my lord husband to that effect.”

  Deenah traced a circle on her forehead. “Gods preserve us,” she breathed.

  “Indeed,” Shiloh agreed, tracing her own circle. “Gods preserve us.”

  “Go back to your homes,” Shiloh ordered, her voice hoarse but resolute.

  She stood on the back of a hay wagon, wand in hand, cold wind snapping her purple headscarf behind her with a loud crack. Northgate Castle stood behind her, dark and lurking against the pink of dawn. Several dozen frightened villagers stood before her, attempting to flee the plague that had swept in from the north.

  “We’re not going to stay here to die!” one of the men yelled. Shiloh could hear some of them muttering, “Abomination!”

  “Do as I tell you, and you won’t,” Shiloh spat back. “Wear the protective charms I gave you. Boil your water. Cook all your food through. Stay inside. Mark your door if any of your folk take ill, and I will send medicine. If you leave this place and grow sick, there will be no help for you. You will die in the woods, alongside the road, in the cold. No other village will let you through their walls. They know you’ve been exposed to the Red Fever. They know, because I sent word to every settlement within a hundred miles.”

  Some in the mob began to look at each other, uncertain in the face of their lady’s opposition.

  “I know you’re afraid,” Shiloh said more gently. “But I assure you the gifted sisters at the monastery and I are doing all we can to protect you. And I cannot allow you to spread this pestilence south and east. I will not. The safety of this kingdom depends on stopping the fever here.”

  Her wand began to glow, and the crowd, as one, took a wary step backward.

  “I survived the Red Fever as a child, a crippled and sickly child at that. If I could, so can you. Go home, for the Gods’ sakes. You’ll be safer there. I promise.”

  “And if we don’t?” someone called belligerently.

  “Then make yourselves comfortable here in the dirt, because you are going nowhere.”

  Shiloh raised her wand and hummed, and a shimmering dome filled the sky, encasing the castle and its surrounding village, forming a glowing barrier that began a few dozen yards from where they stood. A fearful murmur rustled like dead leaves. Some of the children whimpered, which nearly broke Shiloh’s heart.

  “I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” she warned them, sheathing her wand. “Not if you’re fond of your hands. Now, I have more than enough work to do, between saving your neighbors and chasing off Gernish raiders. Don’t bother me with this foolishness again, and thank the Gods I’m a patient girl. If my husband were here, make no mistake, he’d have killed at least one of you as an example. Go home.”

  She jumped down from the cart and strode through the crowd, head high and heart pounding. To her immense relief, they parted to make her a path. Most of them even bowed a respectful head.

  “Would that really take off a hand?” Brother Charls whispered in her ear as he fell in beside her for the walk back to the castle.

  Shiloh snorted. “Of course not. I’m powerful, but not powerful enough to keep up something like that without paying attention
to it. Besides, one of the children might stumble into it. It’s just a light show.”

  Charls swallowed a laugh. “What if they test it?”

  “They won’t,” Shiloh asserted with far more confidence than she felt. “They won’t.”

  They didn’t.

  Shiloh spotted them easily. She’d been expecting them since the moment she’d heard the fever was in the barracks. Sick soldiers meant too few men along the wall, and sick villagers meant unguarded livestock in their barns, unguarded treasure in their Temple, unguarded daughters in their homes.

  From the shadows of a clump of trees, adrenaline alone keeping her upright in her saddle, she watched the raiding party sneak through the last crumbled section of wall that she had not yet been able to rebuild. Beside her stood a dozen armed villagers, the few who had immunity to the fever by virtue of previous infection. The outbreak had finally burnt itself out, thank the Gods, but the recovery was long, and many of the normally able-bodied were still barely out of their sickbeds. On her shoulder sat Honey. The bird glared at the interlopers and snapped his beak, as affronted as his mistress by the trespassers.

  Shiloh raised her wand and lit up the cloudy sky. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll run.

  “Drop your weapons and surrender for trial, or prepare to die,” she called out in both Gernish and Brynish.

  She watched the thieves brandish their weapons and set their feet, prepared to fight. Shiloh sighed deeply. With a wordless spell, she disarmed the raiders. She allowed herself a small smile at the sound of their cries of surprise and dismay as her magic pulled their axes, spears, and knives through the air.

  She nodded to her men, and they ventured out to finish the job, grinning.

  Shiloh sighed again, too exhausted to be properly appalled at the desperate screams of the raiders. Maybe tomorrow night I can get some damned sleep.

  The makeshift captain of her ramshackle guard returned to her side minutes later. “They’re wearing peasants’ clothes, m’lady, but the weapons are those of Gernish guardsmen. No wands, so they ain’t of any rank.”

  Shiloh nodded, unsurprised. The transfer of power in Bryn had made Gerne far too bold for her taste. With a friendly queen in Greenhill Palace and a Gernish Patriarch installed in the Citadel, they knew repercussions for such small incursions would be few.

  “No Feralfolk?” she asked, fingers clenching.

  “No, my lady,” he assured her.

  Well, at least there’s that. Feralfolk had recently been spotted as far west as the Vine, and Shiloh dreaded the day they’d appear in Northgate Village.

  “Well done,” she said to her men. “Hang them from the wall when you’re done, facing the Gernish side. You may divide their valuables evenly among you. Fairly. No fighting each other. Is that understood? Anyone who so much as throws a punch gets the stocks.” They nodded in eager understanding, impatient to split the spoils. “And I owe you each a flagon of wine on Lordsday for your trouble,” she added. They whooped and hollered in reply.

  She clicked her tongue at her horse, and Ruby wheeled around to head back to the stables.

  “My lady!” one of the men cried.

  “Aye, good sir?” she replied, turning back around.

  “Just wanted ta say me thanks. Yer medicine saved me woman las’ week,” a black-toothed farmer shared, cap in hand. “I wasn’t sure what t’make of a hexborn wisp of a mistress when ye firs’ come, but yer a damn fine lady as far as I can see.”

  “I am most glad to hear it,” Shiloh replied with a laugh. “I’ll hold you to that judgment when I have to collect the taxes.”

  She trotted away, their laughter behind her raising her spirits for the first time in weeks. She found her steward waiting for her in the stable.

  “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” she asked, sliding to the ground.

  “I could say the same, my lady,” Gare scolded. “Out with ruffians in the dead of night without telling me.”

  “Your fever only just broke. And I wasn’t alone. I took men. And Honey. And I can handle a half dozen idiot Gernishmen without supervision,” she protested.

  “I’d wager you can handle about anything, but your husband will have my head if he hears.”

  “What my lord husband doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Shiloh declared.

  “Hrmm,” he grumbled. “Good luck keeping Lill quiet about it.”

  Shiloh snorted. “Fair point,” she allowed.

  “You need to give yourself time to rest before your journey south,” Gare admonished her.

  “I know,” she replied. “Now that the fever has burned out, I can rest for a week and still make it to the City for Winter Solstice as planned.”

  “How many did we lose in the end?” Gare asked, coughing into his sleeve.

  “Eight, out of fifty-nine afflicted,” Shiloh replied. “I’d have preferred zero, but given that it’s usually fatal in at least fifty percent of cases, I’ll take it.”

  “You did admirably, my lady. Had it struck last year, I shudder to think what would have become of us,” the steward said. “And we stopped it here? Brother Charls said you had to put the fear of the Father into some of the farm folk who tried to bolt.”

  Shiloh smiled ruefully. “We stopped it here, as far as I know,” she confirmed. “No cases reported in the closest three villages, and it’s been two days since our last. I did have to be rather harsh with them. They’re probably ill-wishing me as we speak.”

  “Nay, my lady. They’ll respect you the more for it. Got used to an absent lord, they did. Needed reminding who is in charge. And Her Grace ought to give you a medal. Can you imagine if the fever had travelled south?” Gare shuddered.

  “I don’t want a medal. I just want her to smile on my husband.” Shiloh sighed.

  “Lill doesn’t like it,” Gare confessed as they entered the castle’s front hall. “His Lordship serving a queen who hates him, I mean to say. The Patriarch has no love for him either, my lady. Lill fears they are simply waiting for the perfect time to sink a blade into his back.”

  “I share her anxiety,” Shiloh admitted, “but it could be equally dangerous for my lord husband to resign.”

  Shiloh shook her head and swallowed her own fear. She hadn’t set eyes on Silas since they’d gotten word of the king’s death nearly three months previous. His letters had been short and vague, which did nothing to set her mind at ease. She hadn’t had much time to worry about him, though, truth be told. She’d had her own troubles to handle.

  She’d had to be lord and lady, both, with no experience to draw on and no shoulder on which to lean. There had been a wall to rebuild, disputes to settle, disease to battle, accounts to keep, bills to pay, maids to hire, crimes to punish, letters to answer, debts to collect, textbooks to study. The thought that she’d be back at court in a week, with nothing to do but attend class and entertain the queen, seemed like madness. Or bliss.

  She bid Gare a good night and dragged herself into her bedchamber, collapsing atop the bedding with her boots still on. Even the worry gnawing its way through her ribs was not enough to keep her awake.

  “We found another one,” Gare told Shiloh the following afternoon, hat in his hand. “A girl. Newborn.”

  “Alive?” she asked, not daring to hope.

  He shook his head. “Weather was bitter cold last night.”

  “Where?”

  “Over by Milky Creek.”

  “Where is she now?” Shiloh asked.

  “In the Temple. I've got some boys digging a grave. I’ve sent word to Brother Charls, but he is tending soldiers at the barracks.”

  Shiloh stood from her desk and swayed a little on her feet.

  “I'll take care of it, my lady,” Gare protested. “You are exhausted.”

  “I want to see her. Say a prayer over her,” Shiloh insisted. “It’s important.”

  The walk to the Temple was both too long and not long enough. Shiloh brought with her a blue Dedication gown. She kept a stock of them no
w, made by one of the local women. She’d spread word throughout the Frontier that she would take any living Unclean children, no questions asked, and see that they were cared for, but the fear of the stigma was so great, greater even than before the Reforms. Shiloh had managed to save very few of them.

  The house the king had gifted her before her marriage was now a home overseen by three Unclean women whose families had cast them out. They had five happy children in their capable care so far, which gave Shiloh some comfort.

  Not enough, she thought as she gazed down at the baby girl someone had left to die in the cold. Shiloh washed and dressed her, then kissed her club foot before placing her in the little coffin Gare had left beside her.

  “What are we calling this one?” Brother Charls asked quietly. He had snuck in behind her.

  Shiloh thought a moment. “Kira. After the saint from Vreeland who slew a monster.” She murmured a blessing, stroking the child’s silky blond hair.

  She crossed to kneel before the icon of the Mother and lit a candle. She listened to the tapping of the hammer as Charls nailed the lid in place, and she tried to quiet her mind enough to pray. Her rage would not let her.

  Gods forgive me, but I do so hate the Patriarch.

  She’d known it would happen as soon as the crisis of the fever had passed. That’s how it always was. The curses clawed their way out of Shiloh just as soon as her exhaustion was total and her guard was down. Thus, she was not surprised the following evening when she awoke from a nap to a stabbing pain in her head and the smell of blood. A hand pressed to her chest came away sticky. She forced open her eyes but saw only a swirling blur.