Latchkey

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  Then, a few days after the earthquake, Jen arrived late for dinner. Stealthily, quietly, looking like she was being tracked by something she’d have to sneak her way past to live.

  Even more alarming, Ruby was with her.

  The high seats never set foot in the Catchkeep-shrine’s common room. The relationship between Sweetwater and the ex-upstarts and -Archivist just didn’t work that way. The town and shrine coexisted peacefully, trading and helping each other in small ways. This—Ruby herself walking behind an ex-upstart into the shrine common room in full view of everyone—was new.

  “Jen?” Sairy asked. “Where were you? What’s going on?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Ruby answered for her. “Jen, show them.”

  And Jen led them all back through the common room, back down the hallway of sleeping-alcoves, into the large room that used to be the Catchkeep-priest’s chambers. That room had a window that opened off the back of the shrine and commanded a clear view across the shrine-yards: past Meg’s berry-garden, Kath’s chicken-coop, the little lean-to shed where they made paper, the clay oven for their flatbreads, all the way to Lake Sweetwater, which was now sparkling orange in the setting sun.

  Jen pointed at something. Isabel squinted.

  Off in the distance above the low buildings she could just make them out, across who knew how many miles of rock and ash and nothing, almost invisible against the sunset. If she hadn’t been looking for them, she’d never have noticed them there.

  Plumes of smoke, or dust, thin as threads at this distance. Easily a dozen, probably more, breaking up to nothing before they vanished against the last of the early-evening stars.

  “Raiders,” Jen said.

  Chapter Three

  Ruby was waiting for her in the altar-room, accompanied by the other two high seats, Jacen and Yulia. With them was a woman Isabel didn’t recognize until she mentally subtracted the dirt and dried blood from her face, mentally added several pounds of water weight lost to dehydration. Cora, the trader due from Stormbreak, arriving late. Late and, oddly, alone. Usually traders traveled in groups. Greater carrying weight, safety in numbers. Yet here was Cora, no sign of her party in sight. She looked like she’d been tied to the back of a cart and dragged through the Waste. Maybe, Isabel thought, thinking of those fires in the distance, she was. Cora was in the process of gulping down what was probably not her first cup of soup when Isabel came in.

  Squirrel was already in the altar-room when Isabel arrived, sitting before Cora and eyeing her and her soup clinically. Isabel had been on the receiving end of that stare before. It was nearly at eye-level and deeply disconcerting.

  Sairy and Jen entered with her. She told the others to stay in the common room. They were up to their eyeballs in some kind of trouble, that was clear enough. She just wasn’t sure yet how much deeper it was likely to get. Raiders or no, what were the high seats doing here?

  “Wasp,” said Jacen, and nodded to her in greeting.

  Ruby stared at him.

  “Right. Sorry. Isabel. Old habits.”

  Isabel ignored this. “Tell me,” she said, “what you know.”

  “First,” Ruby said, “not a word of what we are about to tell you leaves this room. Is that clear?”

  High seat or no, she said this carefully. The atmosphere of the Catchkeep-shrine still carried that weight of expectation, like it was holding you to a certain standard that you’d fall short of at your peril.

  Nonetheless, Sairy bristled. “Isn’t it you who should be asking for our trust?” she asked. Gesturing to the altar-room around them, its scavenge-statue and wall of skulls, as if to say: this is our roof you’re under.

  “Not now,” Isabel told her. To Ruby: “Must be one hell of a raiding party.” She made herself smile. “If you’re after our help.”

  Cora glanced up from her soup. “Raiding party?” Her laugh was more like a choke. “Well. Aren’t we optimistic. Try a raiding army.”

  Ruby shushed her with a gesture. “That earthquake a few nights ago? We only caught the edge of it. It hit…other towns…much harder.”

  Sairy’s eyebrows shot up. “That was the edge of it?”

  “That was nothing,” Cora said. “You had to fix what, a couple houses?”

  “Other towns,” Jacen said carefully, shooting Cora a look, “aren’t going to be able to be fixed.”

  “First the orchard, now this,” Yulia said as if to herself, shaking her head sadly.

  Isabel wasn’t used to seeing the high seats like this. Like there was something they’d be chasing the Chooser’s cape just by saying. “Other towns.” She shook her head, confused. Looked at Cora. “We’re talking about Stormbreak, yes?”

  “No.” Ruby seemed, alarmingly, almost wistful. She took a deep breath like a lake scrap-diver and spoke. “Clayspring.”

  This tore from Sairy a sound of pure alarm. Jen, apparently not having been brought up to speed on that detail of Cora’s news, gasped. Even Isabel was taken aback a second.

  Not every town was sworn to Catchkeep. Each constellation in the sky, each god’s up-self, had at least one town that kept its worship. Grayfall to Ember Girl. Last Chance to the One Who Got Away. Sunrise to the Chooser.

  Clayspring—

  “Carrion Boy’s people,” Isabel said.

  Ruby nodded. Her face was like the midwife’s, confirming an awful prognosis.

  “But what—”

  “Their town’s gone,” said Cora. “Their shrine, their crops. There were fires. We could see them from a half day’s walk. What do you think they’re after?”

  “Good,” Yulia spat. “Let it burn. Their shrine.”

  Cora shook her head. “They’ll take yours. And your gardens. And your houses. And when the garden runs out, and winter comes…”

  She didn’t finish that sentence. She didn’t need to. They’d all heard the stories. What happened to a town claimed by Carrion Boy’s worshippers. What happened to its people. Especially in a starving year.

  “Wait,” Isabel said. “Who’s we?” Then it hit her. “You lost the rest of your party?”

  Cora flinched. Unconsciously she fidgeted at a thing around her neck. Some scrap of Waste-salvage, maybe, hanging from a cord, catching and sparking at the light. “One of us went to Three Hills, one to Chooser’s Blindside. Warn people off the Waste-road between Clayspring and here. Keep an eye out for trouble. Pretty standard stuff for when Carrion Boy’s people go roaming. Nothing special. Me, though.” Cora sat back, crossed her arms. “I came here. To warn you. Because that’s where they’re headed.”

  “You’re sure,” Jen said.

  “Unless there’s another town south along the Waste-road inside two weeks’ hard journey out of Clayspring,” Cora said, “that I somehow don’t know about? Then yes. I’m sure.”

  “How far out?” Isabel asked.

  “It’s a week on foot from Clayspring to here if you’re marching hard, which they are. They mobilized the day after the quake hit, which puts them here in…” Her face went slack and hazy, like she was remembering something she rather wouldn’t. Back went her hand to her scrap-necklace. “Two days if the weather holds. A storm might buy you a third, but that’s it.”

  “But we can fight them,” Sairy said.

  “You can try. I’ve seen what’s left of towns that try and I don’t recommend it. But I’m just here to tell you what’s coming, not what to do when it gets here.”

  “Carrion Boy’s up-self is ascendant,” Jacen added. “While Catchkeep’s is behind the hills.” Then, hastily, as if remembering where he was: “May She soon arise.”

  “May She soon arise,” the others replied, the reflex momentarily overriding their fear. Catchkeep never set, but She was nearing Her lowest station now in the sky. She wouldn’t be at Her highest and most auspicious until spring. At which point they might all be long since slaughtered and eaten. Or left alive, and ritually mutilated, and conscripted.

  “Wait a second,” Sairy was saying. “So
it’s fine when it’s Catchkeep asking for upstart blood,” she told the high seats. “But when it’s Carrion Boy asking for yours, now there’s a problem.” She coughed a derisive little laugh. “That you need our help to fix.”

  “Sairy,” Isabel said warningly, and Sairy shut up, glaring daggers.

  “Listen,” Yulia said. “I was living up at Lisbet’s Rest when Carrion Boy’s people came down on it out of Shelter nine-ten years ago. They didn’t take many of us. The midwife and all her healing supplies. All the children old enough to hold a spear. They made us tell them where we’d buried the food stores. Nobody wanted to tell them, so they grabbed my little cousin out of my brother’s arms, and they…” She trailed off. “We couldn’t stop them then. We can’t stop them now. When they get here, believe me, we want to be gone.”

  “Gone where?” said Sairy. “We’re just going to go take over someone else’s town? Isn’t that what we’re trying to avoid happening to us?”

  “If you see another option,” Yulia said icily, “do enlighten us.”

  “We fight,” Sairy said. “We keep what’s ours.”

  “Like you fought to retain Catchkeep’s favor?” Yulia said. Gave Sairy a slow once-over. “For a while.”

  Sairy opened her mouth and Isabel wheeled and bore down on her like a glacier. “Enough,” she breathed, and Sairy backed down, staring holes through the high seats’ heads in silence.

  Isabel turned to Cora. “Say you’re Carrion Boy’s people. From Clayspring you’d come through Stormbreak along the Waste-road to get here. Long walk for little reward. Why?”

  Cora shrugged. “Stormbreak’s guarded. Too risky. They burned half the night going off-road around the walls.”

  Isabel thought of Lake Sweetwater to the north edge of town, the ridge and the Hill encircling it southwards. The Waste-road only ran through Sweetwater proper one way. “We’re guarded.”

  That half-laugh again. “That’s not what they say.”

  “Who the hell is they?”

  Cora smiled. Started counting on her fingers for her benefit, very slowly, as if to a child. “Stormbreak. Clayspring. Lisbet’s Rest. Here. Word travels far through the Waste. You’re lucky it hasn’t come back to bite you before—”

  “Apparently it is believed,” Ruby interrupted, choosing her words with care, “that in order for Catchkeep’s priest to have been overthrown, Catchkeep Herself must no longer hold us in Her favor.”

  “Or else,” said Jacen, watching Isabel closely, “that She too is dead.”

  At this point Sairy hit her limit. “Her priest was an asshole,” she shouted, and Isabel felt an awkward rush of gratitude. But she knew whose fault it was that the Catchkeep-priest was dead. At whose feet all this trouble fell.

  “Be that as it may,” Ruby was saying, “She let Her priest’s death go unpunished. Nobody knows why that is, and this isn’t the time to argue it. All we need to know is that people think Catchkeep no longer protects Sweetwater, that She has abandoned us, and that we are easy prey.”

  Isabel bristled. “So we’ll prove them wrong.”

  Cora stared at her. “Did you not hear what I just said? Clayspring raider army on the march. Three days out at best from your front door. Look, you do what you have to, but I strongly—”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  Yulia snorted. “We don’t even know what’s coming. Ready for what?”

  Beside Isabel, Sairy was grinning the grin of a person backed into a corner in a sea of enemies. “For anything.”

  “We need a plan.”

  “And that,” Ruby said, turning to Isabel, “brings me to the part where we need your help.”

  * * *

  Everyone else went back into the common room, shutting the door behind them. Isabel stood alone for a moment in the clammy dark, absorbing the humid silence of the place, before beginning the once-arduous task of lighting candles blind.

  One at either end of the altar. Huge pillars of golden beeswax, stuck to the stone slab with their own past meltage, still tall enough that Isabel had to reach up with the flame. The little dish of oil between Catchkeep’s massive front paws was lit next, throwing weird shadows from the mismatched salvage-angles of Her statue, the offerings heaped in the darkness of Her underbelly. A little bouquet of three-eyes, tied off with a blade of grass. A chunk of acorn-flour bread. The sand-colored husk of a molted cicada. A cairn of blackberries perched on a rainstealer leaf. Bits of whatnot from Chooser-knew-where, out in the Waste: fragments of bone, metal, plastic, most unidentifiable. Even a coin, silvery and worn as a ghost, both faces rubbed blank and glistening from the ash burial from which some scav crew had salvaged it. A sun-dried whole apple, tiny and riddled with maggot-holes: somebody’s hoarded ration from last fall’s harvest, when there’d still been an orchard to harvest from. Whoever’d put it there had already, wildly optimistically, cored it for the seeds.

  Next was the worst part. Sixteen stars in Catchkeep’s up-self, so sixteen points of light on Her image that must be lit. The hard part was keeping them all going at once in that drafty open space. The good thing about a muggy summer evening was that it didn’t lend itself to breeze.

  When all was finished, Isabel stepped back. In the dimness of the shrine, if she stood square in front of the altar, and balanced on her tiptoes a little—whoever had slapped the statue together out of Waste-salvage had clearly had a couple inches of height on her—the points of light described Catchkeep’s constellation almost exactly.

  She opened her mouth to say the words that would call the goddess down out of the sky—I am the Archivist. Catchkeep’s emissary, ambassador, and avatar on earth. Her bones and stars my flesh; my flesh and bones Her stars—and stopped, the words caught in her throat. None of that was true anymore. What was she supposed to say instead? She had no idea. Nobody had asked her to do this for years. And never in a situation quite like this.

  “Um,” she said. Cleared her throat. On the wall, the skulls of fallen Archivists grinned down, green stones in their mouths, shadows where their eyes should be. She belonged up there with them. She was living on borrowed time. She knew it. Catchkeep knew it.

  The room hadn’t seemed quite so dark a minute ago.

  “So, uh. Remember me? The high seats sent me to ask You something. We’re in trouble. There are raiders coming. When they get here, it’s going to be bad. We have to fight them. Or run away. So the high seats want to know what You think we should do. Stay or go. Fight or run. They’re waiting for me to come back and tell them what You say, so. Whenever You’re ready. They said they won’t move until You…”

  She trailed off, feeling stupid. Talking to a lump of Waste-scraps, fitted together into the shape of a dog, with candles hidden in its eyes. After the things she had seen, it was hard for her to find a trash-statue duly awe-inspiring.

  She stood in silence, waited a fifty-count. Nothing. The skulls grinned down. Here and there, the candles picked out green glints. Among them, something shifted. A spider? A moth? Some lost ghost? A moth would have gone for the candle-flames. A ghost would have gone for the salt in her eyes. She swallowed, one hand dropping to the harvesting-knife. It wasn’t doing anything this time. Of course it wasn’t.

  “Come on. I’m not asking for much. Let’s say this. If the light in Your left eye goes out first, we go. Right eye does, we stay. Sound fair? Left, go, right, stay. I’ll wait.”

  She parked herself on the stone floor, blinking sleep away, and stared at those two little flames until her eyes stung.

  Stay or go. Defend or flee. Build walls or burn bridges. At a glance, she wasn’t sure which was the least of evils. Two hundred-odd people on the run through the Waste, on foot, carrying their harvest on their backs, or two hundred-odd people, unarmed, unarmored, standing their ground? It was a choice between a bloodbath and a slow starve. Isabel didn’t feel qualified to make that choice herself, or bear the fallout if she happened to choose wrong.

  In her head, a voice said: We bring our own m
onsters with us. It looks like these are yours.

  Isabel started. Had she fallen asleep?

  Catchkeep’s left eye had gone dark. Isabel got up and leaned in close to be sure. Not so much as an ember, though the right side’s flame stood at full strength, flickering as she breathed.

  “Going then. I’ll tell them.”

  With every step toward the shrine-door and the outside and the town hall, though, she became less and less sure. A few years ago, all she wanted in the world was to escape this place. If the lake had reared up and swallowed Sweetwater whole, it wouldn’t have been anything to her. But now? Now these people were her responsibility, whether she liked it or not. And sending them out into the Waste, a few months of slow starvation with winter at the end of it, was sending them out to die. She may as well line them up and slit their throats herself.

  And then there were the ghosts. The ghostgrass barricades. That was wholly her responsibility. What would happen when the people of Sweetwater left and the ghostgrass barricades eventually failed?

  Not my problem, one part of her thought. But another part was thinking about the ghosts jostling at those barricades, bursting forth one day in a blare of silver light, overrunning Carrion Boy’s people and sending them all to Catchkeep’s dominion. It was a pleasant enough notion until she considered what would happen after. How far could ghosts travel from their waypoint of origin? She didn’t know. But the idea of setting Sweetwater’s ghosts loose on the Waste at large was not an option she was prepared to entertain.

  No effort at all for her to picture it, ghosts pouring out of those unguarded passages, tearing through the streets like wind. From every corner of Sweetwater they’d come. Everyplace there was a passage, a place where the fabric between worlds was porous and threadbare, only her ghostgrass barricades holding that onrushing in abeyance. The ledge, the oldest bridge, the tunnels, the well—