The Winter Boy

by Sally Wiener Grotta

  “What do you mean the guns?” Dara asked.

  Rishana shook her head, not wanting to put words to her fear. Not until she had reason.

  Once inside the storehouse, Dara led her to the textiles section. There, Hester crouched over Caith, examining the frail old body through her tears. Michale, usually a paragon of fitness, hung on to Meika’s neck like a limp dishrag. Meika stared at a smear of blood near her foot, her delicate face distorted with shock. Savah rested her hand on Hester’s shoulder, while watching the Healer at work. But Caith was beyond healing.

  Savah looked up at Rishana and shook her head slowly.

  Rishana bent down, searching Caith’s face, seeking even the tiniest flicker of her friend’s spirit. But it was flaccid, empty, with no expression of life, nor of the last moments of what must have been a painful death.

  When Rishana opened Caith’s collar, she tried to not touch, to affirm the chill reality of dead flesh where so much warmth and laughter had been. But she needed the long chain of keys that Caith always wore around her neck. And she dared not delay.

  Rishana started to reach with her other hand to lift Caith’s lifeless head and slip the chain off, when it came free on its own.

  “The clasp is broken!” she exclaimed, as she grabbed the keys and ran to the armory. Easily eliminating the rooms with the bows, arrows, spears, axes and other less sophisticated weaponry, she took only a moment to choose one door among the half dozen remaining.

  “Rishana!” Dara’s voice echoed through the storehouse.

  “I’m over here. At the gun vaults.”

  Rishanna selected the key with the three identifying nicks, turned it in the latch and heard the familiar ratchet of the smooth tumblers. When she had been apprenticed to the storehouse caretaker, Caith had shown her the armory. Thousands of guns, ammunition, grenades and so much else. Some as old as the Peace. Others newly manufactured but given to the Alleshi for safekeeping. All carefully inventoried, oiled and locked away.

  “If you do your job well,” Caith had told her, “none of these will ever again see the light of day.”

  Rishana stepped into the room and turned up the gas lights, dreading what awaited her. All appeared normal. Slowly, she walked each aisle, her eyes sweeping over the rows upon rows of neatly stacked guns, thousands of weapons, ordered according to style and age, twenty to a rack.

  “Rishana, where are you?” Michale called from the doorway.

  “Back here.” Rishana turned the corner to the last aisle, where the rifles with the new style magazines were kept. “They’re gone!” she gasped. Taking a quick count of the empty racks, she instructed Michale, “Tell the others. Two hundred are gone.” Feeling someone approach from behind her, she pointed at the bare wall. “I helped inventory the weapons that are supposed to be here.” Bile burned her throat; she swallowed. “They were smart, leaving the other rifles closer to the door.”

  “Who? What are you saying?” Meika asked, but she must have understood. Why else did her voice quiver? Or was Rishana’s own terror contagious?

  “They didn’t want us to know right away. Didn’t realize I would guess.” Rishana couldn’t take her eyes from the empty racks.

  “Know what?” Savah asked as she rounded the corner, out of breath.

  “That some had been stolen.”

  “Stolen? By whom?” That was Hester’s voice.

  “Kiv.”

  Rough hands seized Rishana’s shoulders and spun her around to face them. “What are you talking about?” Dara demanded.

  “Caith told me that Kiv wanted the new rapid-fire guns. It irked Caith, and she had decided to… You know Caith. It was a game to her. Everything was always a game.”

  Suddenly, the horror — Caith’s death, Kiv’s treachery, her own silent complicity — descended on her. “They murdered her, Dara. And it’s — oh, hell, it’s my fault. I should have stopped her, stopped them. I should have known.” Rishana had never felt so cold. Not even when Jared had been brought home on that wretched slab of wood. At least then, she had been innocent, could have done nothing to prevent it. But Caith. Dear-hearted, wonderful Caith. Every muscle in Rishana’s body vibrated with guilt and sorrow. She couldn’t stop shivering.

  Rishana felt Hester’s arm wrap around her waist, and she bent to the warmth of the older woman’s soft body, allowing Hester to guide her out of the vault. She heard the click of the key locking the gun vault door behind them.

  “Michale, you’re the fastest. Go to Kiv’s house.” Savah said.

  “She won’t be there,” Dara said.

  “We need to be sure,” Savah replied.

  Rishana heard the retreating echo of Michale’s footsteps.

  “Meika, go to the Battais.” Savah managed to not make it sound like the command it was. “We must know about anyone who has been through the passes. But make sure no one is told what has happened. Not yet.”

  Was Savah getting rid of those two for a reason? Or were they part of it all? What of Hester? That would make sense. The three Alleshi of Mistral and Jared’s Triad: Dara, Peren and now Hester, Tedrac’s Allesha.

  How amazing it was to Rishana that her mind continued to absorb everything around her so clearly. Yet at the same time, she felt as if she were drifting through a dense haze, barely in control of her own feet, as Hester led her through the cold storehouse aisles to Caith’s room.

  Savah pulled Rishana’s damp coat off her unresisting frame. But it wasn’t Savah, her husband’s beloved Allesha. No, it was Peren, who had once posed as Jared’s Allesha, a woman Rishana didn’t truly know.

  Hester cleared books off the large armchair and gestured for Rishana to sit. After tucking a blanket around Rishana, Peren moved the desk chair to be next to her. Dara sat on the side of the bed, while Hester busied herself making tea.

  “What were you and Caith up to?” Peren asked.

  Rishana glanced at Hester. As ever, the Healer was a large, imposing presence, with her crown of thick grey hair pulled into a loose knot, still showing touches of the flame red that had once been her pride.

  Peren read her hesitation. “Hester knows.”

  Hester was perched against Caith’s desk, waiting for the water to boil. Always so calm and solid, Hester simply nodded.

  “What do you know?” Rishana asked Hester.

  “That your boy is Mwertik.”

  Shocked to hear it said so openly, Rishana scanned behind her for possible eavesdroppers. “Who else knows? Michale? Meika?”

  “Michale knows nothing of it. Meika, some.” Peren answered.

  Meika, her son’s Allesha. Did that mean he, too, was part of the conspiracy? “Eli?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Only that there is a Mwertik boy whom we hope will help us,” Peren said.

  “But not that he’s my First Boy?”

  “Can’t you just see him?” Peren asked. “Eli’s so protective of you, especially since Jared’s death. No, we didn’t dare tell him everything.”

  The shrill whistle of the steam kettle pierced the air like a scream, startling Rishana into releasing the blanket. Only then did she realize she had balled her hands into tight fists. She wiped her moist palms on the blanket’s soft weave and straightened it around her lap.

  While Hester prepared the tea, her back was turned to the others. “What made you immediately assume it wasn’t an accident?” she asked.

  “An accident? What do you mean?”

  “It appeared as though Caith had fallen during one of her high ladder antics. The contusion on her head and other injuries would be consistent with a fall.” Hester handed Rishana a mug of mint tea.

  “Then you don’t think that Kiv…?” Here, in Caith’s room, where everything had always been so reasonable and safe, the idea of murder was absurd, impossible.

  “I don’t know what to think now.” Hester continued to pour tea for the other two and herself.

  “Could Caith have fallen when she was surprised by them and realized what wa
s happening?” Rishana asked.

  “Possibly. I must admit my examination might have been clouded by my preconceptions of what I would find. I’ll have to study the body more fully.”

  “I’ve always believed Kiv was capable of murder.”

  “Dara! Don’t allow your personal feelings to color our investigation,” Hester reprimanded.

  “We must consider who’s involved, Hester.” Peren’s soft voice belied her intensity. “Kiv has a violent nature. Perhaps this isn’t the first time.”

  “We need to focus on here and now, and not what might have been in the past,” Hester insisted.

  “Even if the past may give us clues to what happened today?” Peren jabbed her forefinger in rhythm with her words.

  “Let’s examine one thing at a time, starting with what’s in front of our eyes. Then we can work backwards.” Hester turned to Rishana. “Tell us, what made you leap so quickly to murder?”

  All three Alleshi watched Rishana, awaiting her answer, but she was unsure and embarrassed. After all, Kiv had said she wanted to kill Mwertik — not one of her own. “Caith was going to talk to Kiv. We needed to know the truth.” Rishana swiveled toward Peren. “I didn’t know who to believe.”

  Peren nodded sadly.

  “And I had to find out what the dangers were for my Winter Boy.”

  “So, you enlisted Caith’s help,” Hester said.

  “I asked her what she knew.”

  “What did she say?” Dara asked.

  “That Kiv wanted the advanced rapid-fire guns to use against the Mwertik.”

  “Are we sure the guns disappeared only now?” Hester asked. “Couldn’t they have been gone for a while?”

  “Surely, Caith would have known.” Peren paused. “Or would she? Two hundred, you said?”

  “Caith kept them twenty to a rack. Ten racks are empty. And they were the deadliest. Anyone armed with just one can outshoot fifty riflemen, or more.” Rishana remembered the jolting power of the gun she had tested; it fired bullets as fast as she could pull the trigger, shredding the wooden target in seconds.

  “It’d be a massacre,” Hester gasped. “We must determine who stole them, and when.”

  “Who has access, knows where and how the guns are stored, has the skill and experience to develop a workable plan and the ability to execute it without being caught?” Peren’s voice was strained, and her face had turned sallow. “Kiv couldn’t have done it alone. She needed people she could trust. Strong. Intelligent. Well trained. Steadfastly loyal to her.”

  “Allemen.” Dara spoke so softly Rishana could almost hope it hadn’t been said. “Kiv Allemen.”

  Rishana felt a knot of anger suddenly burst inside her. One by one, everything she had built her life on was falling apart. Had it ever been real, or just a gentle, comfortable mythology she hadn’t dared examine too closely?

  Michale burst into the room. “Kiv’s gone!” Soaked through and gasping for breath, she collapsed onto the bed, next to Dara. “Not a sign of her.”

  “Are you sure?” Good, steady Hester, never accepting anything without solid proof. “At this moment, my home is empty, too.”

  “Kiv’s house is a mess, as though she rushed about grabbing things to take. Even the icebox door is ajar. If she didn’t ransack her own home, then we’ve another problem.”

  Hester gave Michale a mug of hot tea, watching her with a Healer’s concern. As fit as Michale was, she was well over sixty, and the run from Kiv’s house through the chill rain had obviously been a strain. Hester watched Michale slowly breathe in the warmth of the tea. Then, with a nod, the Healer leaned against the edge of the desk. “We have several questions we must answer.” Hester counted them off on her fingers. “Who took the guns, and when?”

  Peren started to protest, glanced at Michale, then leaned back into her chair.

  Hester continued. “When and how did Caith die? Are the two events connected? Is Kiv anywhere in The Valley? Most importantly, can we stop whoever has the guns before they are used?”

  “Hester, do you know when Caith died?” Rishana asked.

  “I’ll have to examine her more closely, but my initial assessment is that it could have been as early as yesterday evening.”

  “Damn!” Rishana jumped up from her chair, letting the blanket fall as she darted toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Dara called after her.

  “It’s time to find those answers before someone else dies.”

  Passing the many shelves, cabinets and ponds on the way back to the textiles section, Rishana realized how much she had depended on this storehouse to always be here — a rich, wondrous symbol of everything that was good about the Peace. And at the core, Caith’s indomitable spirit. How could any of it ever be the same?

  Caith lay where she had fallen — or was pushed. How small she was in death, now that no mischievous smile crinkled her round, dark face. Bolts of cloth were scattered about, as though they had tumbled at the same time. When the others caught up, Rishana asked, “Did you move her?”

  “No, of course not,” Hester replied, miffed at the affront to her professionalism.

  “She fell like that?”

  “Yes.” Hester looked at Rishana and then at Caith. “But… oh my, I see.”

  “What?” Michale asked.

  Rishana gestured toward Caith. “Look at her. How comfortable she is. She could be asleep in her bed. Where are the flailing arms and splayed legs of a fall? And why was her key chain broken, yet placed around her neck?”

  No one answered. What could they say?

  Rishana bent down and tenderly brushed an errant strand of hair away from Caith’s face. Caith was fully, truly gone; this corpse was only a shell. Standing and turning her back on the body, Rishana started toward the rear of the storehouse.

  “Now where are you going?” Michale asked.

  “If you were planning to steal two hundred rifles in the middle of the night, which entrance would you use?”

  “There’s nothing there,” Dara said. “We checked it as soon as Caith was found.”

  Rishana turned to face them. “Who found her?”

  “I did.” Michale choked on the memory. “Meika came in soon after me.”

  “Anyone else?” Rishana asked.

  “No, no one.” Michale suddenly realized, “No one knows what’s happened! We have to call a Council.”

  Peren hooked her arm into Michale’s. “You’ve a boy in Season, dear. We’ll take care of calling the Council. But first, we must gather what information we can. Otherwise, the Council will have nothing to go on.”

  Dara moved to the other side of Michale. “No need to frighten everyone unless and until we know whether Rishana’s correct or simply overcome with the emotion of events.”

  Michale pulled her arm free, and stepped away from the other Alleshi. “They have a right to know.”

  Hester took Michale’s hands in hers in a gentle Healer’s embrace. “So they shall, but it must be done properly.” She paused, punctuating her words with a deep sigh. “I’m worried, Michale. Caith was beloved. We must be careful how our frailer sisters learn of her death.” She shook her head slowly. “And the shock of learning it was possibly a murder.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Michale said to Hester. “I just won’t be party to anything—”

  “None of us would want that, my dear,” Peren responded. “All we’re asking is that you wait until we know what we’re dealing with. Then we’ll call a Council.”

  “When?” Michale didn’t look back toward Peren, but asked Hester.

  “Give us until tonight. Then we’ll organize a five-by-five rounder callout for Council to meet… shall we say tomorrow… late morning?” Hester turned to each of the others who nodded. “Then that’s agreed. In the meantime, Michale, I’m sure you want to return to your boy. We’ll get word to you as soon as we find out anything.”

  Rishana didn’t wait to see Michale leave, but proceeded toward the back door.
However, something caught her eye along the back wall — tiny, indistinct scrapes on the floor, at regular intervals — and she veered to follow them. Dara, Hester and Peren caught up with Rishana near the preserves aisle.

  “What are you doing now?” Hester demanded. “The rear entrance is in the opposite direction.”

  “I’ve never seen those marks before, have you?” Rishana pointed at the floor.

  The three older Alleshi shook their heads, though Rishana wasn’t looking at them. Instead, she kept moving, following the strange scratches on the concrete floor. “They look like measurements, as though someone were trying to pace out a specific distance along this wall,” Rishana said. “What would they be looking for? They knew where the guns were.

  No one responded, though Rishana was sure they were all thinking about the same thing — the legends of the trove of ancient artifacts and weapons that were rumored to be buried under the stone floor.

  Where the line of scrapes stopped, a track of scuff marks crossed their path. It appeared that something very heavy had been dragged along the floor. What was strange was that it came from the wall itself, as though whatever it was had been pulled from behind the wall.

  Hester rapped her fist on the wall six times: twice several paces before the track, then beyond it, and finally just above it. She didn’t need to say anything. They could hear how hollow that small section was. Intrigued, Peren and Dara studied the wall, running their hands along the cool stone, searching for a seam or release somewhere on its apparently solid face. Rishana and Hester followed the dark scuff marks into a storage aisle, where they found a large metal box behind barrels of cooking oil. An axe lay beside it.

  About the size of a man’s torso, the box was as seamless as the wall. Rishana saw no latch of any kind. Its silvery metal was of such a fine mill that the surface was glassine, with no visible imperfection — other than the jagged hole about twice the width of the axe head. Rishana peered inside, but couldn’t see into the far corners. So she started to reach into the hole.