The River King's Road

by Merciel, Liane

  Albric nodded tersely, feeling another twist of nausea. The man had been one of his lord’s own subjects. “What about the body?”

  “You need not be concerned.” Even as she spoke, Albric could see her corpses shambling out of the woods: first the two loping ghoul-hounds, their mouths red with blood and their eyes empty as ever, then the baker moving with a slower, shuffling walk. His bearded head lolled drunkenly from side to side with each step, but no drunkard’s head ever twisted around until his chin pointed down to his spine.

  And yet there were no other wounds on the man, nothing to explain where all the blood came from. His clothes showed no sign of dirt stains, although Albric had knocked him down hard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let us say the baker never left Tarne Crossing last night. Let us say he got drunk and stumbled out in the dark. Let us say he tripped—drunkenly, foolishly—and broke his neck. A pity. But nothing to do with us.” The Thornlady gave him one last, cool smile, drawing her hood up against the morning sun. “So, you see, having never made a body, we have nothing to return.”

  “Convenient,” Albric muttered. The ghoul-hounds had stopped in the trees near their creator, but the baker’s corpse kept walking, through the stakes and across the ditch that protected the town where he’d lived. He supposed the guards were still in their spell-cursed sleep, for no challenge came from the walls as the broken figure crossed their defenses.

  “Yes.” Severine retreated back into the lacy shade of the leafless wood. “I am afraid, however, that the rest of the day will be less so. I am tired, and must rest … and I must send another message to my Tower.”

  “Why? What about the baby? The girl left not a week past. They can’t have gotten far. We’re this close and you want to stop for a full day?”

  She gave him a frosty glance. Her blue eye glittered like broken ice. “Magic is exhausting. I do not expect you to understand that, but the concentration it requires is far beyond anything you can fathom. You would not like what would happen if mine should falter while I worked. So I will rest, and you will wait.”

  “But the baby—”

  “Will not get far. For the sake of the child, they must travel slowly. I will send the crows out to scour the skies, and soon we will know where they’ve run.”

  Albric scowled. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place? We needn’t have bothered with the baker at all.”

  “Yes. But I’d have been less amused,” Severine said lightly, and vanished into the wood.

  Behind her Albric’s scowl deepened. What had Leferic been thinking?

  The Thorns kept to their bargains. As hated and feared as they were, everyone knew that much to be true. The Maimed Witches of Ang’arta were as oathbound as Celestia’s Blessed; they could not lie or renege on their word, once it was given, and Severine had given hers. She’d taken Leferic’s money and sworn an oath to him in return, so she was bound to do all in her power to ensure that Wistan was captured or killed.

  But that didn’t make her trustworthy. She might not play them false, at least not directly … but Albric couldn’t shake the conviction that she was acting on her own time, for her own reasons, and without his lord’s interests at heart.

  Whatever she plotted, it was Albric’s duty to see that it did no harm to his lord. But how? He had no idea what she was really doing, and no proof to confirm his suspicions.

  Muttering another curse, he stalked after her.

  Their camp consisted of two tiny tents on opposite sides of a small clearing left by the fall of a grandfather maple. One would have been more efficient, both for warmth and concealment, but the Thornlady liked her privacy and Albric was all too happy not to sleep near her, so two tents it was. The ghoul-hounds that she kept nearby crouched in the leaves, impervious to such mortal concerns as cold and damp; the rest of them were off ranging. Albric preferred not to know where.

  He’d stabled their horses in town, both as an excuse to keep up on the ostlers’ news and because the animals spooked when the ghoul-hounds came near. They’d likely have to choose between horses and ghoul-hounds when they finally left Tarne Crossing.

  That choice would not be made today. Severine sat cross-legged on the frosted trunk of the fallen maple, whispering to each of her dead crows in turn and sending them off with a kiss on their heads. Neither she nor Albric would be going anywhere until her birds returned.

  Collecting those crows had been another ugly task. She’d bought a sheep and cut it open on a stubbled field and made him shoot down the crows that came for the gory feast. For hours he’d shot carrion birds, until finally she had near twenty, called an end to the game, and let her ghoul-hounds devour the poor sheep’s carcass. At sunset she used her unholy prayers to animate the little corpses into black-winged, eyeless spies, and Albric had gone to drink himself senseless.

  Hellish work, and a waste of a day they should have spent on the hunt. He pushed away the memory and went to his own tent.

  Buried at the bottom of his pack was a leather-covered prayerbook. It wasn’t a true book, despite the Celestian sunburst embossed in gold on its cover. Between every short prayer were several pages of simple illustrations, each one blank on its other side. The design enabled Albric to tear those pages loose without a casual observer realizing that anything was missing from the book. The twisted scrap of paper between them, seemingly used to mark his place among the pages, unfolded into a slightly larger sheet with an uneven sunburst cut into its center. Back at Bulls’ March, Leferic had a twin to this sheet.

  The prayerbook’s spine hid a thin stick of charcoal mixed with hardening agents. The charcoal stick was wrapped in a tight spiral of dried leaves, helping it hold its shape and protecting Albric’s hand from picking up telltale marks as he wrote. As the tip wore down, he could peel back the leaves to expose more of the stick. It was a Northmarchain invention; their scribes had invented it and their soldiers had spread it. Ink froze too readily to be reliable in their brutal winters, and it was too messy to be easily used in the field.

  The writing-sticks had yet to spread far through the Sunfallen Kingdoms, but Leferic had grasped their advantages immediately and procured a small supply some years ago. They were clean, convenient, and readily concealed. Perfect for work like this.

  Albric tore a blank page from the prayerbook and laid the sunburst stencil upon it. In the outlined space he described their progress thus far, the news he had heard and the rumors he half-trusted, and his suspicions of the Thornlady’s motives. He didn’t mention his nightmares. Nothing about those would help Leferic, and his lord didn’t need to know how guilt-ridden he’d become. Although Albric avoided names and too-damning words, he otherwise wrote frankly, for a coded message would be harder to disguise.

  When he was finished, Albric lifted off the stencil and filled in the remaining space with trivial nonsense, blending the hidden message into a mundane letter to a wife he didn’t have. Then he put away his implements, sealed up the letter, and circled wide through the woods so that he could approach Tarne Crossing from the road. He needed to check on the horses anyway, and a coin to an innkeeper would soon see his letter with a traveler headed to Bulls’ March, where Leferic should receive his message within days.

  He lingered in town longer than he had to. The horses were fine, and there wasn’t much new news to be had, but it was such a pleasure to be among living, breathing people—with all their profanities and complaints and base gutter concerns—that Albric was willing to buy men beers just to hear the same rumors retold a dozen times from different mouths. No one was talking about the baker—yet—and that was a relief as well.

  Only when the sun was dipping low to the west, and he had heard the fourth version in two hours of the “true reasons” for the Burnt Knight’s ride, did Albric finally make his excuses and stagger out of the Dancer and Drum, pretending to be drunker than he was. He wanted oblivion, but that would be unwise.

  Twilight had fallen by the time he retur
ned to their hidden camp. Most of Severine’s crows had come back to roost, squatting in the bare branches of the tree over her tent as if waiting for a hangman to come out with their meal. The ghoul-hounds were nowhere to be seen, and Albric was not about to look. He ignored her tent altogether, hoping she would return the favor.

  He had no such luck. He’d barely set foot in the maple’s clearing before she came out of the darkness toward him, drifting over fallen leaves with the silence of a shade. She wore the dead woman’s face, which meant she’d been in town today too. Severine disguised herself as the murdered pilgrim only when she went to visit the good people of Tarne Crossing. He didn’t recall seeing her, but he hadn’t been looking, so that didn’t mean much.

  “What?” Albric snapped, in no mood for pleasantry. He should have let himself get drunk as a pig’s uncle in town. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d have tripped and broken his neck while stumbling through the ditches, and wouldn’t that be a tidy end to it all? But that was a coward’s escape; if he did that, he’d fail his lord and everything he’d done thus far would have been for nothing. All those deaths, wasted.

  The Thornlady seemed unruffled by his foul temper. “My orders have changed.”

  “Oh? No more torture and murder of people who have nothing to do with our task? Wait, that never was an order. Never mind, then, I don’t care.”

  She raised a sandy eyebrow, but her stance remained serene, an oddly elegant pose for such a dumpy body. “I am to await Sir Kelland’s arrival. The crows have seen him; he is on his way here.”

  “You were hired to take care of a child. One child. No one else. Not some hapless pilgrims in the woods, not a bloody baker, not a gods-damned Sun Knight, for the Bright Lady’s sake!” Albric took hold of himself with an effort, forcing his voice lower. The wine he’d drunk sloshed like acid in his belly. “One child. Which, for all these other deaths, you’ve proved remarkably incapable of finishing.”

  “He will be dealt with shortly. The crows have seen him as well.”

  “Good. Then finish him and let our bargain come to an end. After that, I don’t care what you do. I might even refrain from sending my lord’s men after you for the murder. For a day or two. If you leave promptly, perhaps they won’t catch you.”

  “It would be a waste of their lives if they tried.” Severine let the spell fade around her, returning to her own form. She folded her hands into the wide sleeves of her cloak so that she was entirely swathed in blackness and her face seemed to float, disembodied, in the night. “In any event, I shall require your assistance with Sir Kelland.”

  “No.” All the corroded remains of Albric’s conscience rose up in rebellion. “I’ll have nothing to do with that. Take care of the child and begone.”

  “Easily done … if that is truly your desire. Yes. I can finish the child, and the girl who carries him, and the false knight who fancies himself their protector. And everyone else with them on the road. Oh, yes,” she said, with a glint of malicious amusement at his surprise, “they were not so foolish as to leave Tarne Crossing alone. They left in the company of the Vis Sestani. And they can all be dealt with so easily, and all within the word of our contract. The Vis Sestani do not carry weapons. As you know.”

  “And if I stay, and help you with the Burnt Knight?” Albric said, hating himself.

  “Then only the child dies. I shall prohibit my pets from visiting harm on any who do not intervene.” Severine unclasped her arms and held up her maimed hand in mimicry of a liegeman’s oath-taking. The bare bones and silver fastenings of her two small fingers twinkled in the shadow-laced starlight.

  “Fine reassurance.”

  “I cannot promise that they will be gentle with those who get in their way. But they will not inflict one scratch more than necessary to accomplish your lord’s desire.”

  Albric bowed his head. It was not meant as a gesture of acceptance; it was that he could no longer hold up his head under the weight of his guilt. But intentions didn’t matter, only deeds, and he knew what his deeds had to be. “Very well.”

  13

  “How about a cream horn?” Bitharn asked, broadening her smile to cover her desperation. Bright Lady save her, but she was not good with children. Mothers tended to keep their babies away, as though coming too close to her might infect them with eccentricity, and generally Bitharn was quite content with that. She’d sooner face down a pack of ravening Maolites than be given the care of an eight-year-old for an afternoon … but no one had asked her, so here she was.

  Thankfully the little girl nodded, though she didn’t pull her thumb out of her mouth to reply. Bitharn breathed a sigh of relief, took the girl’s other hand, and led her out of her house. Only when they were four doors down did she finally turn to the child and ask, “Where should we go to get one?”

  The girl—Mirri, that was her name—pointed down the street, back the way they’d come. Bitharn smiled brightly and took her in a roundabout circle, putting another block of houses between them and the child’s own home before they started back in that direction. “Tell me when we’re getting close. What’s your favorite kind?”

  She watched Mirri carefully while she tried to draw the child out of her shell with chatter. The girl might be a little older than she’d first guessed. Closer to ten than eight, maybe, but kept small by hunger and still clinging to a baby’s habits. Many of the children in Tarne Crossing were like that, she’d noticed; perhaps it was something that living on the border did to them. Children who grew up in war-torn lands were the same way: they felt the hardness of the world too young, and it blighted them like saplings hit by a late frost.

  Kelland was back at the house with Mirri’s mother, who had broken her leg in a bad fall last spring. It had healed poorly, leaving her with a twisted, painful limb that made it impossible for her to stand more than an hour at a time or carry a pail of water from the river back to their house, let alone help run the vegetable stall that was their livelihood. Her injury put a heavy burden on the family, and the strain of it probably went some way toward explaining Mirri’s size and behavior.

  While Kelland’s prayers could likely set the leg straight, and even have the woman back on her feet by sundown, the leg would have to be broken again and the bones realigned first. Mirri’s father and her brother, a strong lad at fourteen, were there to help with that. Breaking a grown woman’s leg was not easy, and forcing it back into alignment would not be quick or pleasant work. But the three of them could manage it, which made Bitharn unnecessary, and there was no need for Mirri to hear her mother’s screams or witness her agony. Kelland could be frightening in his power, too, and a child might misunderstand.

  So she had taken the girl out of the home, and now she had to find some way of keeping Mirri occupied for the rest of the afternoon, until the worst of it was over and it was safe for them to go back. Bitharn had no idea how she was going to manage that. Distracting the girl with pastries was a start, but afterward? What did people do with children all day?

  As they circled around an apothecary’s stall and the bakery came into view, Bitharn realized with a sinking heart that she might not even get the cream horn.

  A cart stacked high with wicker cages of poultry had lost a wheel on the rutted road just outside the bakery, upsetting its load. Frantic chickens and white-feathered geese honked and flapped all across the road amidst the wreckage of their cages. The carter was shouting hopelessly at his birds; passersby tried to help, stole his stray fowl, or simply did their best to dodge the panicked poultry as they scrambled down the street. The birds, too, were wild with confusion. Some tried to flee, some pecked at the crumbs that littered the baker’s front steps, and all contributed to the chaos. The baker’s door was shut against his feathered foes, and it was plain that no one would be buying so much as a penny roll until the road was cleared.

  “Well,” Bitharn said, eyeing the madness, “would you like to watch the show?”

  Mirri shook her head. She popped her thumb out of he
r mouth just long enough to say “Hungry,” then slid it back in.

  Bitharn didn’t need another look at the girl’s skinny shoulders to believe that. “Of course you are. Where else can we get good pastries?”

  The child sucked her thumb harder, thinking. “Mathas,” she offered at last. “He has good tarts.”

  “Oh? Where’s that?”

  “This way.” Mirri took Bitharn’s hand and led her away from the squawking birds, taking her through the streets with a confidence that belied her constant thumb-sucking. Clearly the girl knew the town, and the people they passed seemed to know her. A few called friendly greetings, which Mirri returned with solemn nods. Most did not, however, and Bitharn reflected on how strange it must be to live in a town that swelled to bursting each winter and shrank back down each spring. Half the people on the streets seemed to be strangers.

  Mathas’ shop sat on a corner between two narrow but well-trafficked streets, next to a tavern and not far from a scribes’ hall. Tarne Crossing was too small to have the extremes of wealth and poverty that defined city neighborhoods in Bitharn’s experience, but nonetheless it seemed to her that the shops were a little more prosperous here, the houses a little larger. At this hour the place should have been crowded with people buying their daily bread and goodwives bringing their own loaves to bake in the communal ovens for a penny. Instead the bakery’s doors were closed and the street outside was empty. Only a scowling old man sat on the steps, turning a battered hat around in his hands and glaring at passersby with muted fury.

  Mirri hung back from the man, but Bitharn could see no reason to be shy.

  “Excuse me,” she said, walking up to the shuttered shop, “but is this bakery closed?”

  The old man squinted against the sun as he looked up at her. He had the browned neck and callused hands of a laborer, and he gawked openly at the sight of a woman dressed in breeches and carrying a bow. Just as Bitharn was about to snap at him to stop staring, he offered an answer. “Baker broke his neck last night. The brewer’s boy found his body outside Steepshank’s this evening. Figure he got drunk and tripped.”