by Megan Bannen
“This is a seedpod from the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica. May the Father make your mouth clean to sing His praise. May He make your tongue straight to spread His word. May He make your body pure to receive His spirit. May you be as a Vessel of the One True God.”
The man gestures for us to hold out our hands, and I obey without hesitation. He walks the line, placing the pod onto the palm of each small hand. In every case, he waits for a moment and then moves on to the next child. When he gets to me, dread weighs down my insides as I stare into that unforgiving face. I want to scream for Ati to come find me, but how can I cry out for my mother when she’s no longer here?
The man sets the pod on my palm, and there is a pulling at my stomach, a tugging ache in my heart. I feel like a song trapped in a cave, like the newly lit wick of a lamp, brightly burning in the darkness. The seedpod cracks and bursts, and from within the husk, oval seeds on snow-white tufts take flight, dazzling in the sooty air, flying off into the wind like snowflakes.
The song within me cannot be contained. My mouth yawns wide, and I sing like the blue swifts who live in the goddess’s arms in summer. The music pours out of me in wave after ecstatic wave until the song is finished at last, leaving me sick and heaving and shaking with terror at the thing that took hold of me and would not let go.
The man kneels beside me and gently removes the empty husk from my hand. Then he bends to kiss my palm. When he looks at me again, kindness transforms his face with a softness that speaks of safety and comfort. Tears rim his eyes as he calls me what I am: a Vessel.
II.
The Song
Eleven
The suffocating stench of body odor nudges me awake. The world goes topsy-turvy as I experience the sensation of sliding, then falling, but someone catches me before I hit the ground and stands me on my feet. I open my eyes and focus on the filthy, stubbly face nose-to-nose with my own in the darkness.
The Kantari Two-Swords.
Panic jolts through my veins, and my eyes dart about, taking in my unfamiliar surroundings. High stone walls in front and behind with hardly an arm’s span between them. A narrow strip of night sky peppered with stars above. The clanging of the cathedral’s bell from the wrong direction. I’m not in the convent anymore. I’m standing in an alley somewhere in Varos da Vinnica, the town outside the convent walls, with the horrid prisoner I set loose.
The summit. Zofia. The Goodson. The Grace Tree. The light. All of it sinks into my muddled brain, like dirty water soaking into a sponge.
“How—” I begin, but the boy slaps a disgusting hand over my mouth and presses me against the wall, covering me with his body, making my skin crawl. His flesh is so hard, I feel as if I’m being crushed between two stone walls rather than a wall and a person. “Not a peep,” he whispers in Kantari as footsteps approach, echoing down the cobbled streets beyond our rank alley.
I don’t know if I should bite the hand over my mouth and make a run for it, or if I should hide from the men marching down the street. My paralyzing indecision makes the choice for me as the footsteps turn a corner and fade away without my having moved an inch.
The boy steps back, but he keeps a hand that tastes of dirt and rust over my mouth, while his other hand holds me under my armpit, alarmingly close to my left breast. I will scream if he doesn’t stop touching me.
“Can I trust you to stay quiet?” he asks.
I nod, and he takes his hand away. I turn my head, gulping air from the direction of the street.
“Can you stand on your own?”
“Yes.” I’m not entirely sure that’s true, but I badly want his other hand off me. He pulls away, and while I’m unsteady, I don’t topple over. My stomach feels strange, as if I had swallowed a bee, and it’s now buzzing around inside me.
“Can you walk?”
I need to breathe and think for a minute. I wish that odd droning in my guts would stop.
He leans in closer. “I said, can you walk?”
I can’t stand having his face in mine, and I explode, shoving him so hard he stumbles backward and smacks his head into the wall behind him. His left hand flies to the hilt of one of the swords at his back. I flatten myself against the wall, shrinking away from him, my heart slamming against my breastbone. But he doesn’t draw the weapon. He slowly brings his hand back down, unarmed, then holds up both hands as if he’s trying to convince me he’s harmless, as if I didn’t see him kill the Father knows how many men tonight.
“I told you, you’re safe with me,” he says.
“You said if I brought you to the statue you would set me free.”
“I know.”
“You lied.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he tells me, his face stark, as if he’s as unhappy to find me with him in this dirty alley as I am.
My mind digs into my memory, trying to fill in the blank between the moment the Two-Swords cut down the Grace Tree and my waking up in an alley outside the convent, fruitlessly searching for minutes of my life I seem to be missing.
“How did I get here?” I demand, my voice rising above a whisper.
“Shh!” He glances nervously toward the mouth of the alley.
“And what happened to the Goodson? Did you kill him, too?” The second the question is out of my mouth, I’m terrified of the answer.
The boy recoils, as if my words punched him in the stomach. “The Goodson? That knight in the courtyard was the Goodson?”
“Yes. Is he—”
“Death, decay, and dying—I let that monster live!”
The Goodson is still alive. Relief floods me, lighting a wick of hope in an otherwise bleak night. The boy’s hands, still held up in a ludicrously ironic gesture of peace, are shaking badly, and I see my opportunity for escape. My muscles coil, readying to run, but as I bolt he grabs me and pinions me against the hard length of his body.
“Listen to me,” he says in my ear, his wet breath revolting against my skin. I try to bite the muscles wrapped over my chest, but he lowers his arm and squeezes me hard under my rib cage, making it difficult to breathe.
“Listen!” he hisses. “I don’t want to hurt you, and I really, really don’t want you to hurt me. You’re in as much trouble as I am right now. Can’t you see that? When there’s time, I’ll explain everything. I promise. But right now? No time. None. We need to move. Our lives depend on it—mine and yours.”
“Your promises are worth nothing,” I gasp, still struggling against him.
“My promises are worth more than you think. I won’t break another one to you. I swear, I’m trying to help you, and I’d rather do that the easy way than the hard way, all right?”
The little bee in my stomach buzzes so loudly I can hear it in my ears. I stop struggling against the boy and squeeze my eyes shut as if that could make it go away. When the boy releases me at last, the buzzing subsides.
The truth is, I’m not sure who is more dangerous: the Two-Swords or Brother Miklos, the man who may or may not be giving orders to the patrols. For whatever reason, it seems clear that this boy is not going to kill me. I can’t say the same for Brother Miklos, and who knows where he might be right now. So while I may not relish the Kantari’s company, I don’t particularly want to be on my own just yet.
“Fine,” I tell him tightly.
“Thank you,” he says, his face slackening with relief. “Can you get to the town dyer from here?”
The question is so bizarre, I think I must have misunderstood him. “What?”
“The dyer? Do you know where his shop is?”
“I don’t know. I almost never leave the convent. Why do you need the dyer?”
The cathedral’s bells ring in the distance. He peeks into the street, then up at the sky, then back into the street again, and he starts muttering to himself. “We must have escaped the convent on its eastern side, which makes this either Saint Patris Street or Goodson Wike Street. So the dyer should be just three or four streets over and to the northeast, right? Along the city wa
ll.” He turns back to me. “Right?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer but motions for me to follow him. We hurry down a new alley whose other end opens up onto a narrower, poorer neighborhood with houses stuffed together cheek by jowl. We repeat the process twice more, each time heading into an alley a little farther east.
“There. The shop on the corner. Is that a tree on the sign?” His lips brush my earlobe as he speaks, and I jerk away from his touch, shuddering. It’s hard to tell from this distance, and I can’t imagine why he needs to find a sign with a tree painted on it when he’s running for his life and when it’s possible I’m running for my life, too. “Perhaps?”
“Move.” He steps to my side, linking arms with me as we walk brazenly down the street. “And act casual.”
I wish he’d speak more slowly. My not being able to understand half the things he says is only adding to my confusion and terror. “What does ‘act casual’ mean?” I ask.
“It means, I don’t know, to pretend this is perfectly natural.”
“There is nothing natural about a Daughter of Saint Vinnica walking the streets at night with a Kantari Two-Swords.”
“Good point.” He ushers me into the next side street and glances out to take a closer look at the sign. “Definitely a tree.”
He guides me onto the street and heads for the shop, saying “Please” under his breath. Good Father, I think he’s actually praying. He breaks into a trot, dragging me behind him. The marching of the patrols approaches, and he yanks me into another alley one door down from the shop, pulling me through to the other end. Again he pins me to the wall, but at least he doesn’t place his awful hand over my mouth.
I can hear the patrols pounding on doors, rousing shop owners from their beds. All I’d have to do to save myself is shout.
Unless they want to kill me, too.
“What are they saying?” the Kantari whispers. His face is close, his eyes unsettling.
“They are searching for you.”
“But not for you?”
I’m about to say, “No. Only you,” when I hear the word “girl” as well. The Two-Swords must recognize the word, because he curses, “Father of death,” in a throaty whisper.
“Maybe they wish to rescue me,” I whisper back. Why am I whispering? Shouldn’t I be screaming for help?
“It is definitely not a rescue mission.” He moves us into the side street leading along the back end of the shops. “Please, dear Mother and Father, let there be a door.”
And there it is, a door leading out to a work yard that butts up against the city wall. He hurries to it and knocks lightly. Nothing. He knocks again, harder, but no one answers. He curses under his breath and gives it one more thump with his fist. At last, the door opens a crack, and one veiny brown eye peers at us.
“Blessed be the Mother,” the boy says in Rosvanian.
Blessed be the Mother.
My memory springs to life, forcing me to kneel beside Zofia on the unforgiving parlertorium floor once more as she chokes out her last words. She’s dead. Dead. And I don’t know if I can bear it. But then I remember: I saw a soulswift tonight, and I cling to the hope that her soul lives on within the beautiful bird.
The boy peels back the tattered sleeve of his shirt to reveal a tattoo on his wrist of a tree similar to the one painted on the sign out front.
The eye widens, and the door opens.
The boy and I hide under a pile of undyed roving in the workroom as the dyer and his wife wait for the city guard to knock on the shop door up front. Crouched beneath a thick layer of shorn wool, I feel like I’m hiding in a storm cloud, waiting for lightning to strike me dead. The acidic scents of the dyer’s trade is so strong my eyes water, so I can only imagine it masks the boy’s rank stench as well. He holds tight to my sleeve as if I might run. And who knows? Maybe I should.
The pounding of a fist on the front door of the shop gallops through the stifling silence beneath the wool, and all I can think of is the moment Brother Miklos threw the knife into Zofia’s heart. Any urge I had to beg the patrols for help dies instantly. Men’s voices drift back to us, peppered with the clipped tones of the dyer’s wife. Then the workroom door creaks open, and the patrols begin their search, their shoes hitting the floorboards like a hammer hitting a nail. I hold my breath and pray to my silent god.
“Wild-goose chase, if you ask me,” says one set of footsteps.
“Holy Father, it reeks in here,” says the other. “Dangerous murderer, my ass. I could be in bed with my wife right now.”
“Or I could be in bed with your wife right now.”
“Shut your hole, telleg licker.”
Both men laugh.
I sense the boy coiling beside me, ready to kill if he must. As carefully as I can, I reach out my free hand and touch his arm. The men shuffle closer, their footsteps vibrating the floorboards beneath us. The boy coils tighter, so I press harder. One of the men knocks over a jar. The sound of liquid splashing on the floor cuts through the air, followed by the thick scent of ammonia.
“Ach, this place stinks like the Dead Forest.”
“If I were him, I’d hide at the pub next door, not in some smelly dye vat.”
“We should go look there. It’s our duty.”
“And if we happen to stay for a pint or two, so much the better.”
The men leave, taking their laughter with them, and the boy finally lets go of my sleeve. As soon as I hear the front door close, I throw off the wool, scurry into the darkest corner of the room, and sink to the floor. The boy follows cautiously and crouches to my level, although he keeps his distance, as if he’s as wary of me as I am of him.
“Why did you do that, put your hand out to stay me? What did they say?” he asks. I’m starting to get the hang of the way his words rush one into the next.
“They were not knights. They were local men, probably roused from their beds. One wanted to go home to his wife. The other only wanted a drink. They did not need to die.” I turn my face away and add, “No one needed to die tonight.”
The Two-Swords releases a long, slow breath. “Look, what’s your name?”
Despite his rough appearance, I can see that he’s trying hard to come across as kind rather than dangerous, and I decide there’s nothing to lose in answering him. “Gelya.”
“Gelya. Good. My name is Tavik DeSemla. Tavik rhymes with havoc, probably for good reason.”
“Tavik,” I repeat softly.
“It’s nice to meet you, Gelya.” He holds out his hand like I’m supposed to shake it, but then he notices that it’s rusty with dried blood and filth. He ends up giving me a stupid little wave instead. When he sees that I’m not going to answer, he takes his hand back. “I’m sorry, Gelya. Truly, I am. But you’re wrapped up in this now.”
“I do not want to be wrapped up in this!” I protest, and that uncomfortable buzzing in my stomach feels more like a swarm than a single bee. “Can you not . . . unwrap me?”
“I mean . . .” He tilts his head and squints at me as if I were a puzzle he was trying to figure out. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
His thick eyebrows scrunch together in consternation. If he was going to answer my question, the cathedral’s bells cut him off as they peel again, reminding us both that the danger is far from over. Not that I know exactly what danger I’m facing right now. He glances toward the back door, but I’m not ready to let him off the hook. There’s a chunk missing from my memory, a hole my mind keeps prodding the way a child pokes the vacant spot in her mouth after losing a tooth, an empty space that’s not supposed to be there.
“Tavik, what happened at the statue?”
He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get a chance to answer me, because the Dyers return to the workroom, looking wrung out from stress and fear.
They’re an older couple, the man uncommonly stout for a Rosvanian, the woman as fine-boned as a sparrow. I tower over her like a great oaf, but that doesn’t st
op me from rushing to her side the moment she enters the room. I feel much safer with her and her husband than I do with Tavik, even though they must be Elathian heathens, too, if they’re welcoming a Kantari Two-Swords into their shop. I’ve always known that many Elathians still exist in the Ovinist world. I just always thought of them as bandits or criminals. I would never have imagined this sweet old couple.
Dyer hurries over to Tavik and asks, “What’s going on? We were told to expect you, but we don’t know why. What are you doing in Rosvania?”
Tavik glances nervously at me.
“He wants to know what you are doing in Rosvania,” I translate.
“I know.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Tell them . . . tell them that . . . Oh, death, can you just ask them if they have a messenger coop?”
“I want answers,” I press him.
“So do I.” He turns to the Dyers and tries to communicate with them in Rosvanian. “Everything is good. Do you have a . . . ?” His accent is solid, but his vocabulary isn’t. He turns back to me with pleading eyes. “Please. Tell them we need help getting out of Varos da Vinnica. And a safe house on the Milk Road. And another sword. And I need to send a messenger.”
His rapid-fire directions combined with his mushy consonants have me reeling, and the strange humming of my guts isn’t helping matters. “You tell them since you speak Rosvanian!”
“I understand Rosvanian. I don’t speak it very well, and we don’t have time for this. Please, Gelya. I swear I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help us both, okay?”
Dyer takes me by the arm. “Does this have something to do with freeing the Mother?”
“He asks—” I start, pulling my arm free of Dyer’s grip. I’m sick to death of people thinking they have the right to touch me.
“I know what he said,” Tavik cuts in. “Just tell them it’s complicated, and that we need to get out of town immediately.” He looks at Mistress Dyer and begs in Rosvanian, “We need to go.”