by Paul Durham
“None taken,” Rye said flatly. That was all true, she had to admit.
“The Earl didn’t even invite me to his Silvermas Eve Feast this year,” Good Harper grumbled on. “He’s got himself a new Constable—can’t say I care for him one bit. The wag turned me away at the gates without so much as a carrot for the horses.”
Nobody had seen much of Earl Morningwig Longchance all winter—not that anyone was complaining. But Rye had heard he’d enlisted the services of an infamous lawman-for-hire in recent days. The law seldom found its way to Mud Puddle Lane—its residents too poor or unimportant to warrant protection—but Folly said this one had already made some harsh changes in other parts of the village. Rye doubted he could be any worse than his predecessor.
She gazed up at the sky and sighed. Behind the cloak of the invisible Black Moon, the stars shone like a thousand glowing candles on the Dead Fish Inn’s bone chandelier. She wished she was there right now, celebrating Silvermas with Folly and her family. Her thoughts were interrupted by another howl from somewhere across the ice. Good Harper seemed to be paying closer attention to the howls himself.
“Good Harper,” Rye said, now that he’d finally fallen silent. “Why did you leave me this? Was I really so terrible this year?” She held out the black stone she had found in her boot.
Good Harper pursed his lips and took the stone between his fingers. “Eh?” he said, examining it closely. “This isn’t from me. Someone’s playing a joke on you.” He huffed and shook his head. “Drowning—those villagers are rotten to the core.”
With a flick of his wrist he threw the stone out across the river. Rye heard it hit the ice and skid for a long distance before finally coming to a stop. When she looked out toward where the stone might have settled, she noticed the three distant torches streaking in their direction.
“Over there,” she said, and pointed.
“Hmm,” Good Harper grunted, and peered out from under the wide brim of his hat.
“What are they?” she asked.
Good Harper rubbed his beard again and sucked his candy. “Can’t say for certain, but they look to be sleds.”
They were in fact three sleds, pulled by teams of enormous black dogs. They came to a halt in the shadows just outside of Good Harper’s camp. The animals’ claws scraped at the ice and their eyes glowed in the torchlight. They snapped and snarled at one another. Angry and distracted, they were too big to be sled dogs. Wolves?
Rye fidgeted in anticipation. A hooded figure stepped off the lead sled and approached. Other cloaked men stayed with their sled teams and shifted in the shadows. She reached back to get the satchel her mother had packed before climbing down to meet her father.
Good Harper placed a hand on Rye’s shoulder before she could get up. “Lass, why don’t you duck inside the coach?”
“Are they not Luck Uglies?” Rye asked, peering at the animals and sled drivers. Although, now that she thought about it, this is not how she would expect her father to greet her.
“It would seem so,” Good Harper said quickly. “I’ll call you out as soon as I know for certain.” He stepped down from the driver’s box. “But,” he added, in a coarse whisper, “if you hear anything amiss, get out and run for the trees. Don’t look back.”
Rye clambered into the back of the Mud Sleigh as she was told, ignoring the chittering of dozens of caged mice—“treats” for those on Good Harper’s naughty list had to come from somewhere. She parted the sleigh’s heavy curtain so she could peek through. Good Harper met the cloaked man by the small campfire. Rye could see that he was wearing a mask under his hood.
“Fine evening, neighbor,” Good Harper said in an even tone. “That’s a most unusual sled team you and your men ride.”
“Indeed,” the man replied, and looked toward the animals, who erupted into a choir of howls. “The wolves can be quarrelsome, but their size allows them to pull much larger loads than dogs.”
The man’s voice was a faraway hiss that resonated like an echo from a bottomless well. It wasn’t Rye’s father’s voice. She didn’t like it one bit.
“I see,” Good Harper said with affected cheer. “And what loads are you carrying that you need such a team?”
“None just yet. But you have quite the heavy cargo in your sleigh. I think I shall need the strength of each and every one of these wolves to haul it.”
Rye gripped the curtains with both hands. What was going on here? Good Harper’s tone shifted quickly, his voice now stern.
“Neighbor, do you know who I am? This charity is for the needy and downtrodden. The Luck Uglies have ensured my safe passage on these roads for many years, and for that reason I pass no judgment on you or your kind. But I suggest you be on your way in search of a more appropriate mark.”
“If it gives you some solace,” the man said, “let’s just say I am the neediest soul I know. Now step aside.”
He placed a firm hand on Good Harper’s arm, showing no intention of asking again.
Good Harper gritted his teeth and, to Rye’s great surprise, lashed out in anger with an old knotted fist. His blow didn’t buckle the marauder, but it knocked his mask to the ice.
The man smiled, revealing the red patchwork seams of his gums. Then he returned the blow. It crumpled Good Harper to his knees.
Without thinking, Rye lurched from inside the coach to help. The assailant towered over the fallen Good Harper and moved as if he might kick him. But Rye’s appearance on top of the Mud Sleigh caused him to pause and glance upward. His gaze froze her before she jumped down. Most of the man’s ashen white face was shrouded in the shadows of his hood, but she could see that Good Harper’s blow had drawn blood from his black lips. He licked the corner of his mouth with his tongue. Rye recoiled when she saw that it was forked like a snake’s, the two pink ends dancing over his lips like blind, probing serpents.
Rye darted back inside the coach. She clambered over the mountain of coin purses and kicked aside the mouse cages so she could shove open the back door of the Mud Sleigh. The woods were straight ahead. But as she leaped down, her boots skidded out from under her and she landed hard on the ice. By the time she regained her footing, the fork-tongued man had stepped in front of her, blocking her way to the river’s edge. He affixed his mask back over his face.
Rye took a deep breath, her heart pounding. Her mother had told her once: Walk strong, act like you belong, and no one will be the wiser. If these were Luck Uglies, she should have nothing to fear. She took a step to her left. The man moved to block her path. She took a step back to the right. He did the same.
“Who are you?” Rye demanded, doing her best to channel her mother’s voice.
The reply came from deep inside a hollow. “Names are a precious paint to be shared cautiously. Offer yours first, and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Rye O’Chanter,” she said, forcing herself to stand straight and stare hard at the masked face in front of her.
The man reached forward with a long gloved finger. Before she could flinch, he pulled her hood from her head. He leaned in closer, as if studying her. His mask was scaled armor the texture of an adder’s skin, his own eyes just slits behind its red-ringed eyeholes. Unlike all of the other Luck Uglies’ masks she had ever seen, this one had no nose. But a gaping maw loomed open, part of a grotesquely distended chin that extended all the way to his chest.
“I’ve seen you before.” He was close enough that she felt his breath when he said it.
“What’s your name?” she asked sternly, ignoring the knot tightening in her stomach. “Before you do something you’ll regret, you should know that my father is a Luck Ugly too.”
“Slinister,” he said from deep behind his mask. “Now you say it.”
“What?” Rye asked, in a retreating voice that was very much unlike her mother’s.
“You asked me my name and I told you. Now repeat it.”
“Slinister,” Rye said quietly. If words had taste, this one would have rolled sour off her
tongue.
“That’s correct,” he said. “And yes, I know very well who your father is. In fact, I know him better than you do.”
The hollow of his masked mouth was so black and wide it seemed it might swallow her. She took a step away. When he didn’t move to follow her, she took another.
“You may go,” Slinister said, waving a dismissive hand. “Perhaps we’ll have a chance to visit another day.”
Rye’s steps quickened as she moved along the ice, never taking her eyes off the man named Slinister. She found Good Harper struggling to regain his feet. She grabbed him by the shoulders and helped him up, then hurried him across the frozen river. His plum-colored scarf dragged behind them.
“Remember my name, Rye O’Chanter,” Slinister called as he watched her go. She glanced back over her shoulder just once and was relieved that the night now shrouded his fiendish mask.
As Rye and Good Harper took refuge in the safety of the woods, Slinister’s cohorts slipped from the shadows and plundered the Mud Sleigh, loading their own sleds with every last gold grommet and silver shim. They unhitched the horses and led them away. Finally, when the sleigh was stripped to nothing more than an empty shell, the looters lit a raging ring of fire around the camp. Their sleds had disappeared far downriver by the time the sleigh broke through the melting ice and sank beneath the frigid water.
Rye and Good Harper huddled under a tall pine. Rye shivered more from the shock than the cold. She couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.
“A pox on the Luck Uglies and their bargains,” Good Harper muttered. “Mouse droppings for the whole lot of them.”
No sooner had he uttered his curse than a specter clad in black leather and fur appeared like a flickering shadow. In the moonless night, Rye could have mistaken it for a massive wolf rising up on its hind legs, but in its hands, two blades glinted in the light from the fire. Rye pressed her back against the tree. There was nowhere to run.
“Come to finish the job?” Good Harper called defiantly.
The shadowy figure loomed for a moment then, stepping forward, violently thrust its swords downward. Rye pinched her eyes tight. She heard the steel sink into something moist. Perhaps she was just too numb to feel their bite. But when she cracked open one eye, fearful of what she might find, she saw both blades embedded in the ground.
The figure pulled off its wolf-pelt hood and clutched her by the shoulders.
“Riley,” the man whispered, his familiar gray eyes wide in a face of faded scars. “What in the Shale are you doing out here?”
“Harmless!” Rye exclaimed. She blinked in disbelief. “You tell me—you’re the one who sent for me!”
He gently touched her cheek. His hands, like the rest of his body, were etched with tattoos, and while Rye didn’t think there was anything magical about the circular patterns on his palms, whenever he did this it seemed to warm her whole body, his night-chilled skin notwithstanding.
“Make no mistake, I’m always glad to see you,” he said softly. “But I did nothing of the sort.”
Rye shook her head as if she didn’t hear him correctly.
“Three Luck Uglies came to our cottage with a message. And here, on the river, there was a man—a Luck Ugly, I thought. He called himself Slinister.” She shuddered at the thought of his split tongue. “He said he knows you well.”
Harmless’s jaw hardened. A darkness seemed to creep through the lines of his scarred face. Rye had only seen brief flashes of that look before, and each time it had unnerved her. Harmless must have sensed her unease, and pulled her close. His embrace and tender tone shielded her from the fire in his eyes as he scanned the burning river.
“Don’t fret,” he whispered. “We’ll sort this out in due course. But right now we must be on our way. I know a safe place to spend the night.”
The hour was late by the time Harmless escorted Good Harper to the closest roadhouse on the path back to Drowning. But to Rye’s surprise he then led her away from the warmth of the inn. They traveled not to the village but over the edge of a tall bluff and down the jagged coastline. Waves crashed around them as Harmless navigated a rocky shoal that seemed to lead directly into the sea. He stopped only when they reached a mountainous outcropping nestled among the tide pools.
“Here?” Rye asked in disbelief.
Harmless put an arm over her shoulder and waved a hand above him. “Here.”
What looked to be a massive sea stack loomed over them. But now, within spitting distance, it became clear that it was nothing of the sort. The battered rocks had been hollowed out, and rising from the waves were two enormous doors. Each the width of a castle’s drawbridge, they were wide enough to sail a ship through with the tide out to sea, but would once again become a submersed secret when the water rolled back in. A towering, weatherworn mansion seemed to grow out of the craggy rocks, its crooked gables, twisting turrets, and jumbled archways slinking upward like coral in search of sun.
Rye shot Harmless a wary glance from under the folds of his fur cloak.
“You’ll like it. It’s a secret—even from the Luck Uglies,” he said, appealing to her insatiable curiosity. “We won’t stay long. I promise to return you to Drowning in short order.”
But as luck would have it, the lingering hand of a stubborn winter delivered one last blow the next morning. And no one, not even Harmless, the High Chieftain of all the Luck Uglies, was going anywhere at all.
3
Grabstone
Rye sat alone on a cold, black rock jutting out from the sea. She counted in her head as she stared at the violent, churning waves. Two hundred eighty-nine. Two hundred ninety. Rye hated being alone. She liked waiting even less. But she didn’t dare move for fear of slipping on the barnacles and being dragged out by the current.
A dusky brown gull struggled to fly against the wind.
Rye squinted at the bird. It gave her the sudden sense that she’d been in this spot once before, which was odd, since she had never traveled outside of Village Drowning. She shook off the unnerving feeling and resumed her count.
Two hundred ninety-nine. Three hundred. Five minutes now.
A gale sent the gull hurtling off in the wrong direction, and it disappeared into a brightening sky that had been gray with fog and snow since Rye’s arrival.
Rye pulled her new seal-leather coat tight at the collar, its thick hood snug over her head and its long hem covering her to the knees. Even in an ocean storm it kept her remarkably warm and dry. The seal whose hide it was made from met no harm. The reclusive northern salt seal was the only mammal in the world known to shed its skin. Harmless had given her this coat as a belated twelfth birthday present. He’d missed that birthday over this past winter, just as he’d missed all the others before it.
Harmless might seem like a strange name for a girl to call her father, but Rye’s father was—to put it nicely—an unusual man. Rye hadn’t even known that she had a real live father until last autumn. That was when he appeared like a wisp of smoke out of the ancient forest known as Beyond the Shale. He’d been gone for over ten years.
Not everyone had been happy to see him. Harmless was a Luck Ugly. An outlaw so notorious that he and all of his kind had been driven into exile by Earl Morningwig Longchance. But, with Rye’s help, Harmless was able to summon the Luck Uglies and once again save Village Drowning. It had been under attack by a fierce clan of Bog Noblins—vile, swamp-creeping beasts who had threatened the lives of the villagers. One would think that such an achievement would have earned a certain degree of appreciation from the Earl, but Longchance’s hatred of Harmless only grew. It was Harmless’s threat—that the Luck Uglies would be watching—that had kept Longchance at bay ever since.
Rye pulled her knees into her chest to avoid the whitecaps that snapped at her oversize boots like frenzied sharks. Finally, when her count reached three hundred thirty, Harmless broke through the surface of the water. He pulled himself onto the rock and refilled his lungs with a great gulp of air.
His long dark hair was tied into a wet knot atop his head. The leather-and-tortoiseshell goggles over his eyes made him look like a bug-eyed flounder. Where the skin of his bare chest and arms wasn’t etched in the green ink of faded tattoos, it flamed pink from the cold. He dropped a heavy bag at her feet.
“How long was I down?” he asked with an expectant smile.
“About five and a half minutes?” Rye said.
Harmless frowned at himself. “Poor showing. I made it six the dive before.” He threw a heavy cloak over his shoulders and clasped on a runestone necklace that matched the chokers Rye and the rest of her family wore around their necks.
“Well,” Rye said, picking her numb fingernails, “I did lose track of my count once or twice.”
“Nonetheless, it was quite productive,” he said, brightening.
He reached inside the bag and retrieved a strange black object, holding it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. It was the size of an ordinary stone, flat on the bottom, but with long, sharp spines jutting out in all directions.
“What is that?” Rye said, and reached out to touch it.
“Careful. This is a midnight sea urchin,” he said with delight. “The most toxic creature in the northern oceans—one prick of its spine is enough to fell a draft horse. They make excellent darts.”
Rye pulled her hand back warily.
“It also happens to be our lunch.”
He unsheathed a sharp knife and cut open the bottom of the sea urchin. Rye peeked inside the shell. It looked like something Lottie might have expelled from her nose.
“Would you care for the first one?”
“Um, no, thank you.”
“No worries, plenty for later,” he said, and slurped the creature up from its shell. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, carefully placed the prickly remains of the first sea urchin into the bag, and removed another.