Mandisa opened the letter. The script, written in what she could only call liquid-sun, remained foreign to her eyes.
“Well? What does it say, mortal?” Anubis checked his wrist, re-adorned with the now-bloody sundial-watch. The God of the Dead seemed inclined to milk Ra’s essence, calibrating the watch against the sun’s ray.
“I—I can’t read this,” Mandisa stammered, her voice suddenly emerging from its cowardly retreat.
With a sound so powerful like the sun, a voice boomed through the chamber.
“Mandisa. Sweet Forager.
Your life, while fleeter than the blink of my eye, stung me in ways I did not think possible. Your death has me roaring in anger, and I was not about to let Anubis’s blunder sentence you to an eternity of at the hands of Apophis.”
Anubis looked away from the beam of sun, rubbing his wrist. Blood continued dripping down his claws.
“And while I could easily smite those responsible,” Ra’s voice called. “The vagrants hounding you; he who made your sandals which failed to net you traction; the camel whose spit loosened the sand on which you tripped; the stone on which your head split open. Set knows I could smite the entire world without breaking a sweat. I want to give you an opportunity to exact your own sweet revenge while providing ever-true nourishment. I want every Egyptian to know your name like me. I want them to sing of your bounty and envy your existence.”
“But her heart was heavy,” Anubis moaned, tweaking the knob on his sundial. “How can such a heart deserve to beat again?” his voice sounded as close to a whine as Mandisa assumed possible for a jackal-headed god.
Ra sighed, but Mandisa was unsure as to whether the sigh was written in the letter, or whether Ra abandoned the pretext of text and resorted to simply talking to them. The column of amber light within the chamber waned as if mirroring the god’s mood. “This is why I should not muddle in mortal affairs. Can’t make anyone’s eternity without the backtalk.”
From the ceiling dripped two drops of golden amber, clear as the rain and golden as the sun’s rays after the yearly floods. The first drop fell onto the feather, encasing it in solid gold, and sending that scale crashing to the floor. It carried such momentum that it burrowed deep underground, thereby causing the heart scale to fly high into the heavens.
“I’d say the feather is heavier.” A chuckle, explosive like thunder, momentarily deafened Mandisa.
“I literally just had that inspected,” Anubis said.
The second drop fell and levitated before Mandisa’s face.
“Open your mouth,” Ra’s voice calmly ordered.
She obeyed, and when the golden droplet touched her tongue, an explosion of the sweetest amber flooded her mouth and filled her gut. Fearing that she would choke, she attempted to swallow the sweet ichor. From deep in her gut came a heavy vibration. The girl belched, then spat a small insect onto the ground. With her hands, she blocked her mouth, feeling more of the creatures crawling up her throat. She tried to swallow them back like bile.
The small creature ambled around some, then took flight and alighted on her face.
Fire erupted under the skin on her nose. Without thinking, she released her mouth and screamed in pain, thus unleashing a torrent of the small creatures.
“Ahem, Lou.”
They landed at various places on her body, eventually covering her every inch, though she felt no more pain. Their chorus of buzzing drowned out the girl’s mortal cries. After a minute, during which time the creatures covered Mandisa’s body, they took flight, escaping Anubis’s chambers through Ra’s column of light. No evidence of Mandisa remained.
Ra’s voice echoed through all the lands, “You, Mandisa, have received my tears. Henceforth, you shall be my eyes and ears on this mortal plane. Spread your potent product, but teach your people the meaning of tact, patience, and respect, or show them the power of your sting.”
◆◆◆
Katherine jumped down from her chair and raced around the room buzzing, arms free behind her back like wings. After finishing his tale, Lou closed his book and retreated to his room.
Once alone with her grandfather, Katherine excitedly recounted aspects of the story. She suddenly quieted, inching up to her grandfather’s face.
“You know what my favorite part was?” she asked.
“What?”
“When Anubis pounced on Mandisa and pulled-free her still-beating heart!” Katherine poked her grandfather’s chest with her bandaged pointer finger, wincing at the flare of pain she had already forgotten.
“Maybe you can leave that part out when you tell your mother later, eh, Katey?” The girl bobbed her head. “What about the story. Did you enjoy hearing of Mandisa?”
“Oh yes! The next time I see a bee I’m going to tell her how I know her queen’s tale.”
◆◆◆
Gnochi’s gaze flicked between his jittery hands which missed the smooth grain of their guitar, and the young woman sitting beside him. He watched his tired and weather-beaten companion as she capped her inkwell and cleaned the nib. He picked up the journal and surveyed her handiwork. “Control your focus for future writings,” he instructed, handing back the journal. “Neatness is key.”
Cleo nodded, yawning. She flipped to a new page and rewetted her nib. “Who were Katherine and her grandfather?” she asked.
“Oh, that was more nonsense than anything,” Gnochi answered. “As a bard, you learn a few tricks to fatten the chords of the story. I’ve got about a dozen or so of those frames which I can attach to a story if I’m trying to make the moral or purpose blatant to even youngest toddler.” Gnochi paused, scratching at some invisible itch under his forearm.
“So, that story was about what Mandisa became?” she asked.
“Bees,” Gnochi said, allowing the word to curve his smile. “Well, honey bees, to be specific. Among my top three picks for animals which have changed humanity. To start, you have the obvious. Their pollination toil is vital, and the honey biproduct is wholesome for more reasons than merely tasting well.” Gnochi saw Cleo look up from her notes and smile.
“And then there is the mead, which could be the first alcoholic beverage humans cultivated. And we know that without alcohol, humanity would have died off long before it could leave its fingerprint in the sand. So, thank a bee.”
Cleo stretched out before the fire, fluffing the poncho balled up under her head.
Gnochi smiled at how quick she was to pick up that trick. He wondered how many stiff rocky nights were had before he began sacrificing warmth for comfort. She moved to ask him more questions, but he spied the sleep thick in her eyelids. He should not have kept her up this late.
“Shh. Sleep now,” he said. “We’ve got a long day of travel ahead of us if we are to race the sun to Pike’s Cathedral. As long as this blasted rain lets up by the morning.”
Chapter 14
Upon hearing the hollow thump of boots approaching his rented room in the Pike Inn, Harvey perked his head up. “I want a room as secluded as you’ve got,” he had told the innkeeper. “I need to be alone,” he had told Roy. In truth, he had not done much of anything over the course of the week except sleep. Every waking moment, he heard the dead boy’s faint lisp. He still felt the child’s phantom fingers gripping his chin.
The first evening in town, Harvey slipped a pence around a table to acquire information. He had not trusted himself to walk through the town without a fear of seeing the boy dodging between people or buildings.
A light knock sounded on the door. “Hey Harv. I know you’re awake.” Roy had covered for any of Harvey’s responsibilities with the menagerie in the meantime, including treating the ailing elephant. “You’ve ears like a wolf. Come on, let’s get a drink. It’s our last day in town. We’ve already finished packing the menagerie onto her wheels, and we have the day off.”
Harvey threw the lock open on the door before crashing back onto his hay mattress.
Roy blundered in. “Good, let’s grab a dri
nk.”
“We aren’t drinking. Not yet, at least.” Harvey watched as his friend’s face dropped. “It’s good that you’ve got your sword. Can you run to my things, grab mine, and then meet me on the outskirts south of town?”
“No! I know what you’re thinking and that is not a good idea. Not one bit.”
“Roy, they torched and destroyed that building, killing the man who lived in it and that boy for no reason except that it may have had ties to an archaic world. They torched it out of fear. And Dorothea is too spineless to deliver the justice that is due, so, as Providential soldiers, it is our duty to take this matter to our own hands.”
“We can’t though,” Roy said.
“Why? Honestly, tell me why?” Harvey’s voice tinged with a hint of hysteria, but he was present enough to scowl at his friend.
“We could get in trouble,” Roy said, twisting his boot onto the wood floors.
“What are you, a child? And if we are caught and expelled from the army, all the better. If Dorothea kicks me out, I’m on a non-stop haul to Blue Haven where I can avenge our friends. Or did you forget what got us into this mess in the first place?”
◆◆◆
Over a year before the present day.
“Quickly Roy!” Harvey called back. “We’ve gotta get back to the group. I didn’t plan on leaving them alone this long and I’m worried.” The two young men sprinted down the cobblestone streets of Blue Haven’s merchant district in the baker’s hours of the morning.
“Oh please, Harvey,” Roy replied. “I know the reason you are so excited to get back. It is a woman. A fine woman who: ‘smells like lavender and honey bathed in the crisp autumn moonlight.’ Am I right?” Roy teased, giggling as he recalled the poem he filched before Harvey had been able to deliver it.
Harvey stopped, causing Roy to hurdle into him.
“Alright,” Roy whispered, “I won’t say her name is—”
Harvey’s hand clamped over Roy’s mouth. He shoved him under the cover of a nearby retaining wall, pointing out the splintered arrow shaft resting not a foot in front of where they had been running.
Resolution replaced a reflexive fear as Roy unsheathed two long knives hidden from the cuffs of his boots and brandished them. “Darius?” Roy asked.
“I don’t know,” Harvey confessed, his brows furrowed with angst, “but we need to get back to the others. Follow my lead.” He crawled below the retaining wall until he reached the corner of the adjacent building. Out of the archer’s view, he stood and bolted across the street with Roy quick on his heels. The two squeezed into an alley tight enough to press in on their shoulders.
“Shouldn’t have had those extra sweets tonight,” Roy said, huffing between breaths. “Guess I didn’t think we’d be running for our lives through the cat alleys, in my defense.”
“Just suck that gut of yours in. We’re almost through to the courtyard.”
“Ah, so that’s where the split in those two buildings leads to.”
“You’d know if you weren’t gawking at noblewomen all day and actually explored our turf,” Harvey chided.
“What can I say? I like my ladies with class.” Roy chuckled to himself.
“Yeah, and they like their men with cash and titles—not a little vagrant like yourself,” Harvey said, his voice betraying a hidden smile which tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Well if you’d let me handle the pence sometimes, perhaps I might—”
The two stopped after exiting at the foot of the alley as they stumbled onto the remnants of a massacre. A dozen decapitated bodies littered the cobblestone courtyard. Blood still oozed out of the stumps and seeped in between the mossy stones. Roy threw himself at the nearest corpse, trying to discern its identity.
In between checking the corpses, Roy glanced back at Harvey, though he saw his friend sentry-still. Roy continued to look through the bodies until he heard Harvey yelp. A quick glance showed three men subduing his friend, a rough sack thrust over his head. Roy leveled his twin blades, preparing to lunge at Harvey’s assailants when he felt hands locking onto his elbows and neck. Stinging slaps forced the knives from his hands. He struggled against those who held him and managed to slug one with a free hand. A smarting pain spread across the length of his thighs. Losing his balance, Roy slipped in a pool of congealing blood and crashed heavily into a corpse. His last sight before a similarly rough-spun sack was thrown over his head was of three men beating Harvey’s defenseless body to a pulp with punches and kicks. His friend’s grunts of pain could be heard over the laborious breathing of the assailants. The half dozen men placed heavy iron shackles onto Harvey and Roy and threw them into the back of a wagon. They flanked the wagon as a work mule pulled the cart toward the heart of Blue Haven.
◆◆◆
A long minute after watching Harvey and Roy taken away in shackles, a young woman, with hair a mere shade lighter than the blood pooling in the courtyard, exited from a nearby building, running to the center of the courtyard. She collapsed onto the ground; her outstretched arms preventing her hair from dipping in the cesspit of blood and grime. Tears streamed down her face and low sobs echoed along the cracked cobblestone streets. After a while, she stood and, with blood staining her palms and drying down the lower length of her pants, returned to the building through which she had emerged. She knocked and was then encircled by reassuring arms that pulled her into the safety of the building.
◆◆◆
Present day.
“I’m hurt that you would think I forgot,” Roy said, crossing his arms before his chest. He looked down to Harvey’s reddish-brown eyes hoping to see the light of logic that Roy himself saw so clearly. “You don’t forget a scene like that.” Roy thought that his friend seemed clouded by a thick fog of bloodlust. He sighed, then resigned with a shaking head.
“There are eleven,” Harvey said, assuming his friend’s resignation for support. “I figure we’ll kill ten and leave a message branded into the last one.”
“I don’t know how you could’ve found that information out, being cooped up here all week, but somehow I don’t doubt its validity,” Roy noted.
“Watching me, were you?” Harvey asked, winking. “So, you do have a soft spot for me hidden behind that gusto, and the macho mask you wear.” He pulled boots on his feet and stood.
“Just be there in an hour,” Roy grumbled. As he stormed out, he mumbled something about the lack of the local women’s hospitality before slamming the door.
◆◆◆
Harvey had finished adjusting his belt straps when Roy jogged to the edge of the woods carrying a bundle wrapped in light cloth. “Wouldn’t do to have someone see me carrying your sword into town,” Roy explained, unwrapping the sheathed travel-scabbard from its cloth. “I know I don’t need to tell you, but I would feel better to reiterate that from here on out, we are breaking the Providential Code for soldiers. If we’re caught—”
“And who is going to tell Dorothea? Not the dead. Maybe the eleventh man has a set of strong stones or brain enough to figure out who we are. We certainly aren’t dressed like soldiers. Maybe we should cut out his tongue.”
“I’m just warning you,” Roy said, interrupting the gruesome thought.
“I know what I’m getting into,” Harvey snarled. “Let’s go, the Luddites are camped not a mile into the woods.”
“You might be alright throwing our lives away, but what if the capital Luddite leaders decide to exact their revenge on the residents of this town who know nothing of what will happen in their woods? Can you live with their blood on your blade?”
“Let’s go,” Harvey said, taking off at a run into the woods and dodging his friend’s remark. The sun had not yet shined over the woods for a day after the rains, so deep puddles of chilled rainwater still littered the leaf-stricken ground. Not five minutes into their brisk jog, Harvey stopped short, causing Roy to skid in the mucky soil. They crouched under a thicket as, off to the side, a Luddite woman—as told by he
r red robes and bald head—stalked toward town. Roy gripped Harvey’s sleeve, holding him back as if he read Harvey’s mind and wanted to stop him from ambushing her. His fingers had gravitated to the hilt of his blade seemingly of their own accord.
“She’s probably going to town to buy supplies, or maybe she’s relieving herself,” Roy whispered.
“Fine,” Harvey spat. “She’ll be our survivor. If speed favors our blades, she’ll return after our bloodbath with no idea what happened to her comrades. The camp can’t be too much farther. Come on.”
Harvey stood and walked between the trees, sacrificing his speed for stealth. After another few minutes of cautious navigation, they came upon a clearing dominated by two red Luddite tents and a black and regal-red banner waving over the camp. The sun dominated the clearing, offering bright light and a gentle warmth. Within the camp, he spied spied five men clustered around a table in front of the command tent, looking over what appeared to be a map. The smaller of the two tents was pried open at the flap. Within was the shape of someone sleeping. Two Luddites argued over the cook fire, their words lost before reaching the stalkers’ ears. Presumably, he thought, the last two would be in the command tent.
Harvey looked to his friend. “No visible weapons, but it’s a guarantee that whoever is leading these miscreants will have a blade to his name. We need to send a message to the Luddite leadership that their days are numbered. This could very well be the first domino to fall toppling the Luddite power.”
“I’ll take the sleeper and the cooks,” Roy offered. “You get the planners, and we’ll combine our efforts when their leader comes out from his tent.”
“I knew I was the better warrior,” Harvey said, smirking. “I guess that comes with more work.” Without waiting to hear Roy reply to his banter, he sprinted into the camp, launching himself at the table and the men clustered around it. His auburn eyes burned with fury, his mind raw from seeing the boy’s cold, lifeless form surrounded by ash. Thin muscles sat taut under his skin, tensing for the coming fight. Despite the rage that tore through his body, his feet padded so nimbly over the mucky ground that even a seasoned trapper might confuse his footsteps for those of a child.
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