The Things We Bury

by Kaleb Schad

  Anaz cleared his throat and looked at his feet and when he looked up again the sun was low and the shape of Elliot and his horse behind him and the town beyond them took on the shape of the sandfury and the Pit and the rubble and screams. Anaz cleared his throat again.

  “If you see Daveon,” he said, “tell him thanks. Tell him…tell him he was good.”

  It was the kind of dress a princess would wear. Or a queen. The lace across the bodice. The whorls and raised grace of the embroidery. Studded with pearls and fractal gems and hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. A sewn cell designed to imprison not just her body, but her self.

  She admired the way it shaped her body, lifting what should be lifted, flattening what should be flat. The first time, maybe ever, that she felt like a woman, sitting there on her bed. Even sitting, her belly firm and uncreased. The sleeves poured over her knees, the blossoming lace at her wrists draping away.

  She held a cup. Detritus from the dried herbs and roots floated atop the red wine. Mistress Syrup wasn’t hard to make. The kind of recipe perfect for a lady of a court where any kitchen worth its salt would have the base ingredients. And she had been forced to always carry the last bit, the bit that activated the poison, the bit that came from beyond the Wall. Her father had forgotten he required her to keep it with her at all times, a pinch of dried purple flower secreted inside a locket. How would he feel knowing it was his paranoia that gave her the final way out?

  Not too fast and not too slow. Painless. Like sleeping, they’d said. Would she be able to taste it? She’d been told no, but how would they know? Who had drank it and then said, no, it has no taste before dying?

  As the flakes floated, they warbled her reflection. That was good. She didn’t want to see herself. What self was there left to see?

  Would Anaz find out? Would he care? She wished she could stop thinking about him. She wanted him to be the last thing she thought about.

  Certainly not her father. She didn’t want to think about him. Or Sunell. In the Maw now. She struggled not to imagine the hooks in Sunell’s skin, the muscles of the poor girl’s shoulders stretching, stretching away from their bones, separating under the weight. And that would be the beginning.

  She prayed Sunell died quickly. Please Airim, if you give one whit for your people, take her quickly. And Lelana. She wanted to warn her handmaiden, but how? The guards on her door weren’t the new militia men. Her father had made it clear, they could touch her. They could touch her any way they needed to to keep her from running. Except the face, he’d said. That face is worth a kingdom.

  Maybe when they found her body Lelana would figure it out. She was a brilliant woman. A brilliant sister.

  But, would he find out?

  Would he care?

  He was probably over that first ridge, Stag’s Bluff, by now.

  At least he would be safe.

  A tear dripped into her cup and Isabell wondered if it would dilute it. Would it still work?

  He probably won’t cry.

  She lifted the cup to her lips and let the liquid touch them, but didn’t let any into her mouth.

  And then she gulped it. Felt the crumbs slide down her throat.

  She couldn’t taste it. They were right.

  She laid back on her bed and folded her hands across her chest and stared at the ceiling, at the slivered bedposts.

  He probably wouldn’t even cry.

  Alysha set into the wagon the cedar chest she’d packed with their winter clothes and the silver medallions her mother had left her. She watched the last fingernail of sun over the mountains and the spray of scarlet and violet wash across the underbelly of the clouds and she wondered how the sky could be so beautiful when everything in the world was complete and utter shit.

  Nikolai came up behind her and set an axe into the wagon along with several yards of coiled rope.

  Thunder grumbled from behind them. There it was. That extra spoonful of manure in her soup.

  “It’s going to be a wet night of riding,” she said. She walked around to the front of the cart and checked the wheels, the axels. Their lives were going to depend on that cart holding together.

  She felt tears dam up behind her eyes, but she wouldn’t let them out. Miria and Elnis stood on the porch watching them. Elnis hadn’t stopped crying since Daveon had left. Three hours. The child hadn’t cried like this even as a baby. Miria and Nikolai, they seemed to handle these things in similar ways, wrapping themselves in silence.

  She’d been unfair to Daveon, she knew. It wasn’t like last time, even if she’d said it was. He was coming back. A couple hours, that’s all. She just—looking around at her home, at the burned down barn, at Fennel’s corpse in the field—she’d just been overwhelmed with it all. She wanted to run from here this minute and never see Fisher Pass or Evan Malic or the Therentell ranch again. Once they were going, once she knew her family was safe, then she’d be able to breathe again. Maybe tell Daveon she was sorry.

  “Go on in, Nikolai, and get your pa’s knife. Sheath is in the bottom of the chest. You tie that on.”

  His look was a mixture of pride and terror, but he nodded and turned to go inside.

  That’s when she heard horse hooves. A numb feeling came over her legs as she started walking to the corner of the house.

  It couldn’t be. She wouldn’t run. She wouldn’t let him see how happy she was, how relieved.

  When she crested the corner it was as if she’d swallowed a bee, her throat seizing in on itself, breathing, thinking, all hopeless.

  Three men rode towards her house. A man in chain armor, a bloody shine in the lowing light. Next to him a form twice as tall and half again as wide. Ears that stood out like horns and shoulders sculpted for murder. And next to him a small man. Even from here, when he waved his hand at her, his left hand, she could see its twisted shape.

  Evan Malic.

  She turned and sprinted for the kids.

  “Run!” someone shouted, but where to?

  Syla snorted and jumped, lightning under her hooves. She surged forward.

  The herd broke. Daveon couldn’t see them, but he heard them. Too dark. A darkness so black, so thick, he could almost chew it. It was unnatural. Moments ago, they’d been dropping down the mountainside, a small moon lighting the night and now there was nothing. The Wretched had brought the darkness with them.

  Branches slashed across Daveon’s face. He felt something catch his hand, then his arm, tearing at his Airim’s Lance cloak.

  “Samus, left!” That was Calner.

  Someone screamed. A splashing sound, buckets of liquid slapping across stones.

  They’d hit them on the descent. The horses couldn’t keep their footing. Daveon could hear the herd falling, horses screaming, tumbling barrels crashing through the scrub brush.

  Daveon drew his sword, but for what? Even if he could see them, he didn’t think he could swing it. His arms were locked with icy terror.

  And then a light so bright Syla reared up on her hind legs and he had to use both hands to grip the saddle horn to keep from falling, careful with the edge of his sword not to cut Syla.

  A whirling tornado of flame cycled before Daveon, not thirty paces away. In the center knelt Ella, her hood back, her hands pressed into the ground. The flame rose higher and higher and Daveon grunted against the searing heat and Syla twisted and tried to run, but Daveon heaved on the reins and she came back.

  The light brought the world into focus. Ahead, the Lances were fighting like starving dogs unleashed in a butcher shop, their swords orange shards in the fire’s light. Everywhere he looked were Fletchers and Wallwraiths and four-armed bat-like creatures with ragged wings dropping out of the trees and dead horses and dead knights.

  Calner was pinned between a Fletcher and a Wraith. The Fletcher hopped from side to side, keeping Calner from finding an angle while the Wallwraith flung blue flecks of sorcery at him. Two of the flecks buried themselves in Calner’s left arm. He roared and slashed at the Wallwraith, but
the creature whipped up its cloak to meet the blade. It was as if Calner’s sword had struck tar. It stuck and sank slowly into the cloth, a wet warping to the fabric.

  Daveon stopped thinking. He spurred Syla forward.

  The Fletcher, seeing Calner’s blade trapped, leapt forward, its mouth wrapping tight around the knight’s right thigh. The metal of his armor folded in on itself and the knight swore.

  As if she knew Daveon’s plan, Syla turned perfectly, offering Daveon a clean hack at the Fletcher. He hung off the side of her and swung with all the terror-filled strength he could find. The Fletcher’s head came away from its body, its teeth still stuck in Calner’s leg.

  Daveon pulled Syla up and turned her to make another pass at the Wallwraith, but just as he did the Wraith erupted into flame, a stream of fire cutting the monster in half. Calner ripped his sword free and shielded his face as he fell backwards.

  Ella floated across the ground. Her skin radiated yellow and white light, red veins crisscrossing her neck and face, her hair transformed to flames. It was as if she had sucked the sun from its bed and now had it within her. Gouts of flame as wide as trees sprayed from her outstretched palms.

  Everywhere trees burned. The smoke was as thick as fog, stinging and suffocating.

  Men screamed, awful, rattling wails more bestial than the Wretched themselves. The last use of living breath.

  The ursinine gave a long, hateful roar as it stormed from Wallwraith to Fletcher, swatting them left and right, pouncing on them with its front paws, pinning them and tearing humongous chunks of dead meat from their bodies. Its white snout had turned black with undead flesh.

  Two Fletchers sprinted towards Ella, from behind. They closed with long loping leaps, forked tongues dangling behind them like broken chains.

  She couldn’t see them.

  “Ella!” Daveon shouted. He kicked Syla forward.

  Three more Fletchers sprinted towards Ella from the front. One of those bat creatures speared its way through the flames and slashed the girl’s cheek before turning to ashes. Where her skin broke open fire appeared, like burning edges of paper.

  Daveon could have sworn Syla was as angry as he was, the way she charged, as if she could sense these creatures were the cause of it all. They were the cause of the Rot and the dozens of dead brothers and sisters she’d lost from her brood. They were the cause of her master’s anguish and her master’s wife’s lost parents. These monsters had made a mistake, though. They had thought they would catch these men and women in the mountains where they wouldn’t know how to ride, how to fight in such steep terrain, but they were wrong. For Syla, these mountains were home.

  They were going to reach the Fletchers in time. Ella was still struggling against the three in front of her, she hadn’t seen the two behind, but Daveon would reach them. He would.

  It came from Daveon’s right and had he been paying attention, he realized later, he might have been able to save her, but he wasn’t and he didn’t.

  The Fletcher hit Syla like a perfectly placed arrow, its claws opening the horse’s throat wide.

  Syla couldn’t even scream before dying.

  58

  He wasn’t delaying. He wasn’t. He’d crouched here, on top of the bake house, behind this chimney for two hours, watching the sky yield to night and the improvised garrison make its circuits around the village. They were getting better, more aware, less chatter and joking. As if they knew their time was tugging away, making taught their nerves. Eventually, the wall would reach them. Eventually, this would stop being a game.

  Yet, he knew he hadn’t stayed up here because the guards were impassable. Alone, Anaz had no worries of diverting their course or attention long enough to get past. Yet, if he weren’t waiting for his chance to leave, what was he waiting for?

  From behind him, down by the Sunflower Stop, Anaz heard a woman screaming. And then he heard his name.

  “Anaz! I need Anaz!”

  He turned and saw a woman’s silhouette in the street outside of the Stop’s gates. He opened himself to the hsing-li trying to see the woman’s face.

  Elliot walked to the woman and took her by the arms.

  “Anaz,” she said. “I need to find him.”

  The woman’s face and voice came into focus. Lelana, Isabell’s handmaiden.

  “Steady, ma’am,” Elliot said, “Steady. Anaz isn’t here.” Elliot looked over his shoulder towards the Stop, then leaned into her and whispered something that Anaz couldn’t hear.

  Lelana dropped to her knees. Her head lolled to one side.

  Anaz crawled to the edge of the roof, held the edge and lowered himself down, then dropped to the ground. He stepped out into the road.

  Lelana looked at him and whispered his name, then scrambled to her feet, running on all fours for several paces before she could get her feet under her. Anaz braced himself to catch her when she crashed into him.

  “Anaz!”

  He pulled her into the alley between the bake house and the grainery and held her at arm’s length and searched her face.

  Don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. Tell her to let what happens happen. These were the futile flapping’s within him as he said, “What has happened?”

  “Sunell, she’s been taken by Nattic,” Lelana gasped. “And my lady—” Lelana’s face crumpled and her eyes glistened wet and red and her chin wrinkled in on itself as she tried to work her mouth, but couldn’t, couldn’t say it.

  “Isabell. What about her?”

  “She’s dying. She drank something and she’s dying.”

  Alysha felt Two Fingers’s fist before she heard his horse. It hammered into the back of her neck and her head snapped back, then forward, dragging her body with it. Alysha didn’t remember hitting the ground, but woke with her face burning, stones plowed up around her.

  “Don’t damage the reward,” Malic said from somewhere behind her.

  She tried to lift her head, but sunlight exploded behind her eyes, white washing out the night. When it cleared, she saw Elnis and Miria at the far corner of the house. They hadn’t stepped out all the way. Maybe he hadn’t seen them. It was dark. Alysha shook her head at them, a small, frantic motion, hoping Malic thought Alysha was only trying to clear her mind.

  She got to her hands and knees.

  Two Fingers stopped his horse in front of her, then dismounted. He stepped up to her and hooked his boot under her ribs, then shoved her so she rolled onto her back. He stepped onto Alysha’s chest and pushed her back into the dirt, crushing the breath out of her.

  “Dammit,” Malic said. He was off of his horse and running to Two Fingers. He shoved the half-orc off of her. “Dammit.” He stood over her and smiled. “My lady, I apologize.”

  He reached a hand out and pulled her to her feet.

  “That was overeager of my man.”

  “She was running.”

  “And you were mounted, you dumb troll.”

  “Malic, let’s go,” the knight said. Alysha recognized him, Feren Taralost, the oldest boy of Jonas Taralost. Jonas had always been a good friend to Alysha’s dad, often spending evenings over playing Two Tones or Ricklesticks. Feren would come with. They’d spend the evenings chasing each other, along with her brothers and sisters who were still at home then.

  “Feren?” Alysha hated the whimper in her voice. Her head swam. The horses stood sideways, now upside down.

  “Whoa,” Malic said. He snatched Alysha’s arms and kept her from falling. “See? Now you gone fucked her brains.”

  “Thems the parts you’re worried about fucking?”

  “Malic,” Feren said. Alysha’s head re-anchored itself and she was able to find Feren’s face in the fog. He looked uneasy.

  “My dear,” Malic said, “your husband has left?”

  “What?”

  “Your husband. He is gone?”

  “The Airim’s Lances…”

  “See?” Malic looked at Taralost, “As I said. Gone. And without payment.”

&n
bsp; Feren’s mouth flattened into a thin line.

  “Without—” Alysha said.

  “Without payment. Yes. What did I tell him? I told him that if he tried leaving without paying, the baron would consider him in default of his debt. Well, Feren is here as a representative of the baron. Sir Taralost—”

  “You got your money!”

  “I’m not a sir,” Feren said.

  “Good Taralost,” Malic said.

  “He brought you the king’s writ!”

  “Please record with our Lord Baron that I have taken Ms. Therentell—”

  “He brought you your money!”

  Alysha tried twisting free, lunging against his grip, but the half-orc snagged her by the shoulders.

  “—as indentured manservant in recompense of monies owed.”

  “Manservant,” Two Fingers said and chuckled.

  Alysha kicked Malic in the knee, a stomping kick she’d seen Daveon practice once when he was sparring against a post in the barn. Malic yelped and thrust a hand out to catch himself on his half-orc.

  He straightened and used his withered left hand to push the hair back from his left eye and he looked at Alysha.

  “For the next six years,” he said. He wiped the hair away from the other eye. Then he whipped the hand out and clubbed Alysha on the cheek. She fell into the half-orc. “You are mine. Mine. Property, Ms. Therentell.”

  Alysha’s breath gnarled itself in her throat and she thought she might retch.

  “Property.” Malic clubbed her again, this time on the other cheek.

  “Malic,” Taralost said.

  Malic leaned in so his nose was pressing against Alysha’s and she could taste his breath.

  “Do you feel that?” he whispered.

  He didn’t think his leg was broken. It was pinned between Syla and a rock and Daveon kicked hard at his horse to drag it free, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Fletcher turned, impossibly fast, and came straight at him.

  He kicked again, inches.