It was said her mother’s people had skin like bark. Rubbish, he thought then, or that runaway had done her daughter wrong in gifts of birth. Flesh was flesh and blood was blood.
At the sight of the blood, Voren cringed away. Don’t look, can’t—Yet he found Chigenda sidled into his space, and he flinched away from the southerner, but if the dark man paid him any heed, he made no outward sign of it. Unlike Alviss, this one still showed no break. Cool as the wind he stood, and moved light as a mouse to ground. Does nothing move you? Still, in his posture and the way his hand settled in caress against the hilt of the machete at his belt, Voren saw a hint of protectiveness. For whom, though, stood the question.
“It will need stitch,” Alviss laid plain. “But it may escape scar. I need ointment. Child?”
It must have been a difficult request for the old man. Positions suddenly reversed. Essa was the doctor of the group, if they were to have one at all. While the intricacies of apothecaries, perhaps, evaded her, the lighter pieces such as this came easily to her. Yet now she could do nothing for herself.
She shook her head at the question and seemed to shrink deeper into resolution. “We’ve none,” she answered. “The last was taken for the scouting’s misdoings. The camp—”
The rest passed unspoken. Alviss looked to Rowan, and the fair-haired mess clearly quailed at the thought of leaving his cousin. Yet he went all the same, saying, “I will scour the medicus till medicine sets in hand or my arse is thrown from their door,” and fleeing headlong for the safety of action. It would do him good. There was wisdom in the sending, for there was nothing else he might have done for her anyhow.
“Backer,” Alviss said next, twisting to him. Voren stiffened at the word—the Kuric’s poor attempt at pronouncing his family’s name—and duty. Yet he saw no malice in those eyes. Only the same concern. “Come. Sit with her. Press the cloak tight.” He relaxed at this, bowing his head in deference before sliding down beside her in the muck. He looked to it, felt the brief and terrible surge of doubt that always reverberated from such mess, and then he looked to her, and felt nothing. He hesitated only to see if she would deny him, but she only watched with a child-like curiosity as he drew his arm about her, and drew cloak and warmth both close.
The Zuti slid after him, stepping between the group at an angle. Fingers still drummed against the hilt. He looked at her, then to Alviss. There was a spark of something in the shuffle of his feet. It drew even Essa’s gaze up, where normally her eyes would not venture. He met her stare, and nodded sullenly, thin lips drawn almost into non-existence against his skeletal face. Where light caught, it made a phantom of him, dark and broad and terrible. A warrior.
“This…punish?” His lips seemed to struggle around the word, and he hesitated at its utterance, as if fearing it were not the word he wished. It was a question that set Essa’s own brows furrowing, lips parted, but drifting—uncertain how to answer. Chigenda growled at his own encumbrance, adding: “For town? The—the sight?”
He meant the bloodying work, surely. The very thought seemed to dull the flickers of light in Essa’s eyes, and she nodded limply to the fact. This was perhaps worse than words could offer. The simple madness of it seemed to reach even the Zuti, his cold dead eyes fixing abruptly beyond them, the world bearing itself in color to him. Voren knew the look. Had seen it in soldiers’ eyes.
It was not one he cared for.
“Dis fair?” Chigenda’s face had darkened to such a raw nerve of emotion, Voren thought he was for a moment in danger of becoming human. The dark earthquakes that became his eyes rippled out as he straightened. “I show fair. Is more de bloody.”
A hand snapped out, catching him by the wrist. He looked as startled as the rest of them to find the pale skin led back to Essa, her hard eyes boring up into his own.
“Don’t.”
Chigenda’s jaw firmed at the word—surely not one he was used to hearing—and his eyes still searched, but when the tension parted from his shoulders, Voren knew he had broken as surely as the rest of them, though he would not put it to words. “You have…” The Zuti reached for a word, only to give up a moment later, saying, “Fight. Spirit. Body. These are…strong.” The hand fell away and the Zuti, looking suddenly uncomfortable, receded from it. He made excuse, and slid out and away as quickly as possible, on Rowan’s heels.
They sat like this a little while longer, the baker and the barbarian and the tortured girl between them, head cradled against her knees. Then she flicked to Alviss and dismissed him as well, saying: “Go with them. Lest they find trouble.”
The great bearded father hesitated, and Voren wondered if Alviss thought it was his departure at the last such asking he sought to blame for this, but there was some quality in her voice that none could shake. He took her hand, folding it between his own, and kissed it, tender as a newborn babe. “I would have stopped them,” he said hoarsely, but this was meant for him, not her, and she knew it to be so. This seemed to wither some of her own resolve, but he heaved to his feet and left them both before word or deed could dissolve entirely.
Then they were alone. Alone, and he with nothing to say. Apologies curled on his tongue. Anger died there too—it seemed somehow ingenuous in the face of such resolve.
But in the silence that followed, he watched that resolve crumble like the paper wall it truly was. Essa choked on a sob and shuddered, such that Voren snapped to her side and put his arms around her to steady her again. Her head twisted just so, and he caught the glint of scarlet at her cheek. Spatter. It chilled him.
“What have I done, Voren?”
He looked at her askance. “Done? You don’t mean—”
“These things. They keep happening and I can’t seem to stop them and they just—how much is one person to bear?”
“Es!” His fingers dug against her and he became acutely aware that the pair of them hung as if dangling on open air, mere inches from one another. “You have done nothing. No one deserves what has happened to you. No one.”
“And yet…” The words came up like a morsel one gagged on.
There was a moment when her breath caught and she seemed to close her eyes tight against the evils of the world. He knew she questioned whether it was her own fault. There was no reason for it, but so it was. He longed to tell her she was perfection, she was devoid of fault, but he guarded their silence, for he knew those words would only strengthen her guard and draw her further into doubt.
Then she sobbed and he felt the last shred of him break. A picture of that boy turning away from her bleeding body came fresh to mind, and with it the thoughts came: How can a man turn from this? How could you let it come to pass? His hand shook, he knew, wild and uncertain, and gave his wrath away. If only you had drowned yourself in drink and left her to her own.
It all came back to that. None of it. None of this would have happened if not for him. The sages—they often said a breath could stir storms, as a man could change the world, and Voren could see this was the case for Rurik Matair, though no change for the good had ever stirred from his foul breaths.
He tried to hide his shaking from her but, being Essa, she caught it even through the veil of her own depression, and looked sharply back at him through it. The look stilled him, for through the pain he felt the breath, and the steadying thought that welled there.
“Do you remember the day my father was whipped as I?”
He would have preferred not, but he did not have that luxury. A nod sufficed—he remembered it well. Though none of the townsfolk were allowed at her side during the punishment, he had gone to her after, and held her, and offered her bread for the pain they both had suffered.
He thought of Pescha and how the fool, like Essa, had seemed to breed problems by the score. Yet Pescha made his own, where she only had them set upon her shoulders. Pescha had been the first to do so, in truth. It had been the booze, then—as it always had been. The man had been huntsman to Lord Matair, but he had slipped too deep into the drink. Ev
en a loyal man could not turn from it by the end. So he had paid by lash and laceration, and made his daughter pay in turn.
The young did not understand crimes. They merely suffered their results.
Then, as now, Rurik had stood to the side. Then he had said it was his own father’s doing that bid it. A child, he supposed, could host excuses. A man had nothing but his actions. Rurik, perhaps, had never grown past that tiny creature.
“Aye. A terror, that. Second to worst day of my little span.”
“He cried out.”
He looked at Essa crossways, trying to figure what she played at—the flow of thoughts. “Aye. Terrible, in its own turn. I remember watching, watching you and thinking—oh, Maker, I know not how you lived with it.”
To her credit, she did not turn from him. “He was a drunk and a fool. He brought it on his own self.” The dull tenor of her conviction was almost worse than the tears.
With its passing, he made the connection at last. These were not the random thoughts of a broken mind. She saw herself as a continuation of the failures he had wrought. That the pain, though she could not understand it, might have somehow been deserved. How she lived with it, indeed! How anyone could bottle up so much guilt, so much fear, and go through their days with smiles and courage to spare—he stood more in marvel, and terror, of her than ever before. This was no girl. At the least, he owed it to her to try and break this atrocious connection.
“You are nothing as him, you know.”
“Did I say I was?” Though phrased as a question, there was a bitter sort of knowing in it. Nothing like the woman he knew.
“The seed bears not the stains of the father. Each is their own life.”
“Then why—”
“Confuse not the poorness of luck and chance and the doings of others with wickedness, Essa. You are not your father.” He almost bit his tongue, but he had come so far—he let the rest spill out, and be damned with the consequences. “Your father was a fool and he was a monster. The only good thing he did was bring you into this world, and he spent the rest of his life punishing you for it. It wasn’t right and it isn’t right that you blame yourself.”
This, however, turned her aside. She swallowed hard and focused pointedly on the earth. “I’m not pure,” she added momentarily.
“Is anyone? That doesn’t mean anything. This pain—it should not be yours to bear.”
She made a little sound as she straightened. “Second. You said—you said that day, that it was your second. What is—that is…”
“A consequence: the day you left.”
It was a long time before either spoke again. Then, quiet as a mouse, the breath leaked from Essa’s lips: “Sometimes, I hope him dead.” Had he not been so close, he never would have heard it. A wisp of a thing, as though the very mention could sunder the world.
He gathered her a little tighter, cradled her head. “Has he ever tried to find you?”
“No.” The gap after this was long enough that Voren thought the conversation left at that. Then: “Only once. It wasn’t more’n a month after he took me to Rowan and his. I heard them quarrel. Rowan and him. Peeked out at them through the window. Papa said he was sorry. So sorry. Like he always did. But Rowan and his papa—they said he weren’t welcome around no more. I think he knew it then. Realized, or something. Because something changed. He looked spoiled for a fight and then—then he just slunk away.
“I suppose he might have come back one day, but who knows? Rowan and I left not long after. To find our own way. To hide from him. To…to…” Her lip quivered, stilled.
“Essa?”
“My mother,” she said, when she found her voice again. Exasperation lit it, and another cool tear rolled against his arm. “The dancing. The singing. The travelling. It was all well and good but—I wanted to see if I could find my mother. Stupid, isn’t it?” She shifted in his arms, twisting to look up at him. And for the first time, he beheld her eyes as through a looking glass, the wavy character of her tears not reducing her, but making her all the more powerful. She was not afraid.
Solemnly, he shook his head. “Did you find her?”
“What do you think?” The words, apparently more bitter than she intended, stopped her own self cold. Gingerly, she reached out to touch his hand and sighed deep. “She was Aswari. Who would care to know? But I have a notion. They used to have a camp. Not far from here, really. Beyond the trees. It was burned, years ago, when they moved them all west. From what I understand, a lot of them—a lot of them died.”
There were few places worse than the Aswari camps. People liked to gossip about them. Noble men, paid for the charge but scarcely noble in its execution, had long been given the duty of guaranteeing the Aswari life and lands within Idasia while at once keeping them from any of its proper citizens. Like penned animals, Voren’s father had called them. In the foolish wonder of youth, at the time he had asked: were there no free Aswari?
“As there are wild dogs, and Orjuks,” his father had bellowed. “But all find their way back.”
It was an unpleasant thought. “You really think she would have gone there?”
“No? Yes? Who knows. I didn’t know her. But I have to think I’m like her, and if that’s true—I would choose family over Pescha any day. For better or ill.”
Would that it were never for ill. It never had to be again. This was the moment. This tender, open thing. So unlike her, so telling. It sealed everything for him. For once in his life, the baker knew and was resolute. He stroked her arm, as he often had the grains of flour strewn about his kitchen. There was too much pain in the world. It was time he took some of it away.
This was the bridge across which there could be no return. A devil waited at the other end. A devil with eyes of water and of earth. Lies it had whispered too long to the wind.
* *
Say my name.
Damp yet fragrant, the air was of pines and water and curls of smoke. Nothing remained of the corpse-fires. They had burned themselves to ash and left the earth in peace. Yet there could be no calm. Not in the face of madness. Flames burned still as campfires, and in the flaring sparks there was not a man that should not have seen some familiar eyes staring hauntingly back.
Movement and muffled voices full of anger. They shuffled beyond the baleful boundaries of canvas, in the light, where they made ready to leave.
Without him.
Rurik knew this, and so he made the gesture. Night had confirmed everything, in the horror of dreams. The madness in the shadows that stalked him. He had too long walked the streets and trees, looking for sign of his brother. Then this. He could not close his eyes against them. He fixed his eyes on her, still at the opposite end of the tent, wrapped in the gloom like a cloak. One last try. It was all he could do. If only she would…
Say my name.
“Will he let you?”
Bodies stirred the camp to motion. Dead men moved the living. Dogs wailed, to the crunch of boots. There was no nobility left in these man’s hearts. Nor in his.
“We are not slaves, Essa. I can go…if I wish.”
She snorted, but even that jerk of the shoulders brought her up short. The blood, he knew—it burned in the whip’s wake. “You aren’t? So you say.” Softer, then: “So you say.”
He felt the quake in his shoulders. Alviss had nearly barred him from the tent. The old giant had taken him by the shoulder and wrenched him back so hard he thought he was for sparring. Yet he had said nothing, offered no resistance, and the Kuric had steadily bent to him, knowing he would not leave. It was to be quick. Fleeting. They thought, perhaps, he had come to say goodbye. Could any of them forgive him enough to allow for more?
The Bastard had led him astray. As deluded misconceptions of Rurik’s father before him. It took his focus from the present, to future and past and anywhere but what mattered. He had seen the blood it led to. He wanted no more of it.
“Would you have me stay? Assal above, is that what you want?”
&nbs
p; She would not even look him in the eye.
“You will do what you will. You always have.” Her head shook him aside. “It began in Verdan, I suppose it only right that it would end there. Go along. We will follow if you choose it, lord.”
The false honorific bit harsh. There was no mirth to it. Lord. If he was a lord he was the pettiest of them all, lord of the mayflies and the lemmings. Not a man. Not even the boy he once had been. He knew it to be so.
Say my name.
For once, he realized, there was no ring of steel in the trees. Mud had taken it. Ash and mud and all the rest.
“I don’t ask you to follow me. I just…” There was hate in him. He could not even begin to describe. This woman sat before him—a woman he had known from scraped knees and climbing trees—and yet…he could not say. Words were not enough. This was what they had come to, and it had been his own doing.
“He would burn it all. You see that, don’t you?”
She bit her tongue.
“Look around. Take this and turn it on the nobles, Essa. All the nobles. Who would be left to support him? To keep the other nations out? The fool has spoken long of right and vengeance, and godliness, but they are just words. Same as any other man. He may talk it up—the cry of the people, of the Farrens. But there’s no right here. It would all come to the same end regardless. The squabbling would just lead to more—more claims, more conflicts, more revenge and—”
“I wasn’t rejecting the logic,” she said sharply. “Merely—never mind. I know.”
“Essa…”
“What? We leave with or without you. If you come as well, perhaps there remains some chance for your twisted soul.”
She looked at him levelly, with a stare that could have turned a dead man in his grave. There was finality in it. Rurik said nothing. He shook his head and waited for the tent flap to shudder back into its place. Eyes waited ravenously for him. Voren shouldered past him before the light had settled in his own. Not even a backward glance. No friends here, in the group that he had made. He had forsaken them. Such favors were always returned.
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