by John Bierce
Ten steps across the parlor.
Silas had stopped screaming after two hours. Dierdre didn’t know whether he’d died or his voice had given out.
Three across the entry hall. She took a deep breath, pivoted, and made sure to take shorter strides on the way back.
She didn’t even know if anyone had come to check on Silas or tend to him. She didn’t even know if a priest had come to record Silas’ name, if he had died, to make sure the ancestors could find him through the spirit realm.
Five across the entry hall.
She’d been so happy when they moved here. It wasn’t far from the old place, but Thaniel’s hard work, smart investing, and a windfall of good luck on a merchant caravan he’d joined had improved their lot far beyond anything Dierdre had ever expected. She’d considered moving in with Thaniel’s family, crammed above their tailor’s shop, far better fortune than a girl like her from the slums deserved.
Nine steps across the parlor.
Thaniel had braved the streets, despite her protests, to go check on his family. He should be back by now. The streets of Seibarrow were mostly empty— the townsfolk having all barricaded themselves inside or fled to the countryside.
Or were screaming and dying of the Wrack.
Three steps into the back hall, then into Thaniel’s office.
They’d all heard the rumors from Castle Morinth. Everyone had been stockpiling food, and Thaniel’s investments had been booming. Then the Wrack seemed to have just… vanished. They’d all breathed a sigh of relief, and Thaniel had even bought Dierdre a new necklace.
Then the town woke up a week ago to screaming in the night.
Five steps through her husband’s office, past his desk and to the south wall of their home.
The old widows Asa and Sara lived there alone, claiming to be cousins, but everyone in the neighborhood knew they were no such thing, and that they considered themselves married. They were well-loved by all in the neighborhood, and this was hardly some rural village where even the rumor of such things would raise a mob. So long as they kept up the pretense, none would gainsay the women. Judgment belonged to the ancestors, not the living.
Four steps back across Thaniel’s office.
There were just five screamers that first night, but Lord Arnulf— of the same name as the dead prince, may his name always be remembered— had been one of them. His sister, another. A palace cook. Two wealthy merchants that lived close to the Seibarrow castle.
A brief pause at the office door, then a turn to the left and five steps across the kitchen.
The second day, there were at least two dozen screamers.
She took a deep breath and evened her stride. Seven back across the kitchen.
The second night, there had to have been at least a hundred. Most of the remaining nobles in the city started dropping like flies. Wealthy merchants and well-to-do artisans. City guardsmen. Screams echoed all across the better parts of town.
Three across the back hall, pausing briefly at the stairs.
In the slums, where Dierdre had grown up, there hadn’t been a single screamer. The Wrack had passed over them completely.
Halfway across the parlor, a particularly pained scream from down the street distracted her, and she lost count.
Dierdre thought of the cousins she hadn’t spoken to in years, the monolith where her parents’ names were recorded, and the narrow streets where she’d once played.
Three steps across the entry hall, then she turned and strode over to the shrine to the ancestors. She’d heard the heathen Sunsworn and Moonsworn had household shrines as well, to their murderous goddesses, as though in mockery of the truth of the Eidolon. Many of the poor spoke respectfully of the Moonsworn, but where had they been when her father was slowly dying after being run over by a cart? When her mother’s neck had swelled up, and the growth had killed her over months? What little comfort either had gained came from their ancestors, not heathen goddesses.
Some of her fellow slum dwellers had mocked the Eidolon, but they were criminals and thieves. Most of the poor, though, kept to the faith. Even though many were foolish enough to praise the Moonsworn, they still honored the ancestors on fast days with gifts of food they could hardly afford, with gratitude for what little they had.
She turned without praying at the shrine, and took four unsteady steps back to the parlor.
When she was young, they mocked the rich folks, mocked the merchants who aped the nobles, for only caring about the ancestors when it was time for their names to be recorded. For griping about every gift to the ancestors on fast days.
Five steps to the middle of the parlor, then an abrupt stop.
She’d tried to be true to both her ancestors and Thaniels’. She’d never complained about the gifts to the ancestors, never turned aside the priests and acolytes on alms days, and tried to pray at the shrine every day. Had she done it enough, though? Were her ancestors still content with her offerings?
She turned and took four steps back to the entry hall. Three steps to the shrine. She started to kneel, then stopped.
Would her ancestors even be able to guide her, to help her? Had any of them ever known anything but poverty? But the slums? She had no idea. She didn’t know where she came from. Shamefully, she didn’t even know their names beyond her great-great-grandparents. She’d never even met her grandparents, for that matter.
Would Thaniel’s ancestors know any more? They were honest working folk, but none of them had risen to the heights Thaniel had. And even if they had guidance, would they offer it to her, or just think her an unworthy upstart?
Dierdre pressed her first two fingers to her lips, then to the shrine, but she asked for no guidance.
Four steps back to the parlor.
On the third day, rumors had begun spreading wildly. That the Wrack was a plot by the Sunsworn, carried out by their Moonsworn agents. That it was a plot by the Galicantans, who wanted to try and unite the continent again.
Ten steps across the parlor.
That it was a plot by the northerners, with their beautiful songs and murderous ways, whose warlike ancestors demanded they raid and pillage the honest folk of Lothain. That it was a plot by the jealous king of Geredain, who still believed he had a right to Lothain’s throne.
Four steps through the cramped back hall, pausing briefly at the stairs.
That it was the revenge of the Sei ancestors, slain in battle centuries ago at the base of the low hill where the castle now rested. That their rage at being burned without recording their names had finally boiled over at a town that had the gall to name itself after their defeat.
Seven steps across the kitchen, where she rested her head against the locked and barred alley door.
That last rumor, for all its silliness, had haunted her dreams. The foolish Sei didn’t honor their ancestors anyhow, worshipping some dour, joyless god that promised them nothing but more misery after their death. Something about it, though, had lodged under her skin.
Six steps back across the kitchen.
Four days into the screaming, the poor of Seibarrow had rioted. They’d seized the contents of the granaries, then barricaded themselves in the slums. For all the hundreds of screamers among the wealthy, among the crafters and merchants and nobles and artisans and guards, there’d only been perhaps a couple dozen victims among the poor and laborers by then.
Four steps to cross most of the kitchen, only to wince at another, particularly pained scream. This one bore the signs of a voice about to rupture, to give out.
Dierdre had never expected to learn what a screaming voice about to give out sounded like. She never expected to learn to drown out all but the worst screams. She never expected that as the number of screamers decreased— as they died, recovered, or simply tore their voices apart— that the quiet would scare her more than the screams. The city had hardly ever been quiet before. There was always something making noise. Even in the dead of night, guard patrols and nightsoil carts made their r
ounds. The only time she’d ever heard the city quiet before was in the silent hours after a blizzard had coated the city white.
In between the screams, little shards of that cold quiet were creeping in. Dierdre found herself shivering despite the heat.
Two more steps. Not towards the back door, but towards the fireplace, as though to warm herself.
There was worse than the screamers, though. Worse than the quiet. There were the moaners and the babblers.
The screamers were lost in some awful, mindless pit of pain. They only lasted a few hours at most until they stopped screaming. The moaners and the babblers, though… they just kept going, and going, and going. They were quieter than the screamers, and tended to be drowned out by them, but they kept lurking at the edge of hearing, as though waiting to come in.
Three steps to the back door, where she rested her hand on the bar.
Dierdre didn’t know how long she stood there, thinking about opening the back door and walking into the back alley. She had no idea why she was thinking about opening the back door and walking out. She had no idea where she was planning on going, or if she just sought longer distances to pace, out in the back alley where the rats and other vermin lurked.
Before she could figure out the answers to those questions, a knock sounded at the front door.
Dierdre’s mind went blank, and she could feel her stomach in her mouth.
The knock came again.
Nine small, slow steps across the kitchen.
She couldn’t imagine Thaniel brought home good news. If his family had been fine, he would have been home hours ago. The Wrack must have hit them. Maybe one of his brothers. Maybe one of his sisters. Maybe his mother. Maybe his dissolute uncle, who only came home when he ran out of drinking money and needed a place to stay and work. Maybe his great-grandmother, a woman who everyone in the family joked about being so ornery and stubborn that the ancestors kept her alive just so they could have a little peace.
Six steps down the back hall.
Everything Dierdre had lacked, everything she’d craved out of a family, Thaniel’s family had. They’d unquestioningly accepted a poor, illiterate, skittish girl from the slums, embracing her immediately. They’d taught her letters and numbers, and not one of them shamed her for her disreputable, slovenly, criminal cousins.
She loved them for it.
Fifteen steps across the parlor.
She couldn’t even hear the screamers. She couldn’t hear the moaners, or the babblers. She couldn’t even hear that cold quiet in between them all.
She could only hear the intermittent knock, and the matching pounding in her ears.
Three steps into the entry hall. Three steps that took her halfway across, where she just stared at the heavy oak door.
She turned her head towards the family shrine, and a dreadful thought crept up on her.
When she’d prayed, how often had she prayed to her own ancestors, and how often had she prayed to Thaniel’s? How many gifts had she offered her own ancestors, and how many had she offered Thaniel’s?
Or, rather, how much more had she prayed to Thaniel’s ancestors? How many more gifts of food had she offered Thaniel’s ancestors on fast days?
And what would her lack of contact with her cousins look like to her ancestors?
How angry might her ancestors be?
The knock came again, and Dierdre swallowed.
Two determined steps and she opened the door to let Thaniel in.
Only it wasn’t Thaniel.
It was his sister, Shalis, her eyes red-rimmed with tears.
Annica knew the monsters had gotten in when she heard the scream from downstairs. They’d come to torture Mama, then her. She bundled the blanket tighter around herself.
The screaming stopped, and footsteps thundered through the house and up the stairs. Annica’s door burst open, and she screamed, knowing the monsters were there.
The monster in her room called her name, searching for her. She could hear another monster say something from downstairs but couldn’t make it out.
Then the monster’s hands were on her, and were pulling her out from under the bed.
She couldn’t fight back, wrapped in the blanket, and she only succeeded in hitting her head on the frame, and everything went wobbly. The monster tore the blanket from her, and she weakly kicked at it, and realized it wore Mama’s face.
The monster pulled her close to eat her, but the bite never came, and she realized the monster was Mama, and Mama was sobbing.
Then they were running down the stairs, past Auntie Shalis, who put a hand out to stop them, but Mama just kept running, and then they were out the door, and the screaming was loud and clear now.
Annica burrowed into Mama, trying to drown them out, but the bits of cloth in her ears didn’t do anything to help now, and they slipped from her ears as Mama ran down the streets. Mama’s tears kept falling on Annica’s head.
They ran past her friend Jon’s house, who she’d told Mama she was going to marry someday, and her friend Sara’s house, who could sing really pretty, but her door was just sitting open now, and Annica knew the monsters had got her. They ran past the butcher’s where Mama got their meat. He looked really scary but was actually really nice. His door was open too.
There was trash on the streets now, and rats hardly looked up from it as Mama ran past them. They ran past the cooper, the blacksmith, and then Annica didn’t know where they were anymore. Mama kept running.
The houses were smaller and uglier and more run-down now, and there was a big pile of trash and chairs and tables in the street and there were people on top of the pile and they were yelling something— Annica didn’t know what— and Mama was swaying and not looking at anything and her arms were all twitchy and then Annica was on the ground and Mama was on the ground and Mama was screaming and she didn’t know where they were and Mama was thrashing about on the ground and Annica wanted her to get up because the monsters were coming.
But Mama kept screaming.
CHAPTER SIX
Precipice
Carlan was having an exceptionally bad day.
The king, panicking about the advancing plague, had ordered the palace sealed off from the rest of the city, and he had largely sealed off the capital itself from the rest of Lothain— save for shipments into the city. The rest of the king’s council had supported the move, despite the opposition of Carlan, the medical council, and the Moonsworn. The only communication in and out of the palace now had to either be shouted down from the walls or carried by semaphore.
That’s not to say that quarantining the palace and the city of Lothain from the rest of Lothain was necessarily a terrible idea solely considering the Wrack— they still had no idea how the disease was spreading, the quarantine might very well keep it out of the city. It’s just that it was a terrible idea from nearly every other point of view.
The capital was the economic and administrative hub of the nation. Nearly landlocked Lothain had only one port and no great cities other than the capital. The provincial nobility was weak, and the populace held the throne in great esteem. Power in Lothain was centralized in a way that it wasn’t in any of its neighbors— not even Geredain, so similar to Lothain otherwise.
With no less than four northern cities having been hit with the Wrack in the past two weeks, a good chunk of the country was already in chaos. Cutting off a huge chunk of trade, administration, and guard patrols around the nation would have disastrous consequences at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.
Of course, on the other hand, quarantining the city might do nothing. They still had no idea how the Wrack spread, and quite a few scholars, seers, and Moonsworn were convinced the disease had a truly absurd dormancy period— one of weeks or even months. If that were true, then the plague was most likely already inside the city.
They had no treatments, no cures. The only thing you could do for a victim was offer them something to dull the pain, and prices for poppy
had skyrocketed— as had valerian, skullcap, catnip, willow bark, and any other herb that might offer victims the least relief from the pain. Healers and the wealthy around the city were stockpiling like mad.
To make it worse, the outbreaks in Seibarrow and the other northern cities nearest Castle Morinth had upended what they thought they knew about the disease. The nobles and city leadership had been laid low everywhere, with the wealthy and the merchants suffering almost as badly. In Seibarrow, the low-lying slums had been passed over almost entirely, while in two of the others, the poorer parts of the city suffered only lightly. In Frostford, the closest and smallest city to Morinth, the poor had been hit fairly hard, but they still got off far more lightly than the wealthy.
It was that fact, Carlan suspected, that had the leadership so panicked. Plagues of one form or another always worked people— rich or poor— into a panic, but this one was something else entirely. The wealthy couldn’t buy their way out of disease entirely, but it was commonly accepted that they’d do far better than the poor. Having enough to eat, being able to afford healers, and not being packed together like rats in an alley all tended to let them shrug off the worst.
The poor only had the Moonsworn, who were overstretched and overworked. At least a half-dozen cities had already barred Moonsworn from entry or forced them out entirely, their rulers convinced the Wrack was a Sunsworn plot.
This only made the poor angrier and more panicked, as they didn’t share the same resentments towards the cult of healers their betters did.
If only Yusef had been inside the palace when it was sealed, Carlan might not have such a headache now, but as it was, he had no other healers or seers he truly trusted or felt he could rely on.
Past that, the city itself drew close to a boil. The brutal, muggy heat of the plains in late summer and early fall should have had people lethargic, trying to do anything they could to keep cool, but fights were breaking out left and right in the city below, and there’d already been a half-dozen near-riots. The city guard was barely keeping a handle on things, and for that matter, they were close to rioting themselves.