by Barb Hendee
The young man’s eyes shifted briefly to her before returning to Tris. They were a clear light brown.
“Ask whatever you want,” he said. “None of it matters to me. Brianne is gone, and that white thing coming at night isn’t her.”
“Leif!” Alexandre admonished.
“I don’t care if it goes or stays,” Leif added.
Mari had no idea why Tris was questioning these people, but she waited on him just the same. Little he’d done seemed to matter—to them or to finish off her last doubts about him.
He just stood there staring back at Leif.
“Ask him if he knows why Brianne went to Soladran,” he said suddenly. “If he knows the truth, question him about all that happened when she returned. And do so again until you get answers.”
Mari sighed in frustration. This wasn’t getting anywhere that she could see, but she turned to Leif.
“Do you know why Brianne went to Soladran?”
He scoffed at her. “Of course I know. She went to see that guardsman, the one who loves himself most of all.”
At this, Alexandre’s mouth gaped. Apparently, a good deal had happened that he didn’t know about, though apparently others here did.
“You were angry about it,” she claimed rather than asked.
“Angry?” Leif returned. He coughed one laugh at her. “I was glad! I wanted her to see him and how he lived, in those barracks. I’d heard all about him from other guards in the patrols. He had three or four women in Soladran!” He lowered both eyes and head. “I loved her. Once she saw what he was, I knew she’d come back to me . . . but he’d already killed her.”
“Killed?” Mari asked, startled.
“Or let her die; what’s the difference?” Leif answered. “She stumbled into the village near dawn, looking starved or wasted away. I saw her first—watching for her return—and caught her as she collapsed. She kept mumbling and whimpering bits and pieces, but I put it together. Something at the barracks—horrible and white—touched her. He did nothing about it, even when she started wasting away. When he abandoned her, it was all she could do to get home . . . just barely.”
Mari’s breaths turned short and shallow; lost in his words and slowly heating up, she felt her eyes begin to burn as her irises opened. She could feel a shift coming in anger, and then Tris nudged her from behind. She took a deep breath.
“What touched her?” she asked with effort. “What could make her starve to death in the time it took to come home from Soladran?”
He cocked his head to one side, and his voice was cold. “I told you what she told me, and then she died.” He looked away. “She was the only thing that mattered in this mudhole.”
“Watch your mouth,” Alexandre warned.
Mari said nothing and began to want out of this place before she heard any more. It wasn’t her problem, wasn’t her place. It wasn’t gaining her what she wanted after half a lifetime of hunting him.
“Ask him about the lock of hair.”
Mari almost turned on him at that, but she eyed Leif instead. Her ire at Tris, at this village, at everything, made the question come out harshly.
“Did you cut a lock of her hair . . . after she was dead?”
Leif started slightly. “Cut her hair? No—why?”
She didn’t look back at Tris as she shook her head, but then she rattled off everything for him before he could ask. He didn’t say anything. Finally, she looked over and up at him.
“Now what?”
Tris looked to the zupan and said in Belaskian, “The mother.”
—
Mari didn’t want to question anyone anymore, especially not the dead girl’s mother. It would be awful enough to lose a child, only to have the same come back to haunt its home. That would only add to a mother’s raw wound. Mari understood this.
She had enough of her own wounds and didn’t want to face someone else’s. This reluctance grew worse when the zupan knocked on another dwelling door.
After a long silence, the door opened, revealing a haggard woman, heavyset and with gray streaks in dark blond hair. The elder woman’s expression remained blank. Ignoring everyone else, she turned her vacant eyes on the zupan.
“What do you want?”
“To talk,” Alexandre answered. “These two have questions, and you’ll answer anything they ask.”
Cecilia said nothing. Was that hate in her eyes? Finally, she looked over at Mari and then up a little, likely at Tris. Either hate or something else flashed by then, with a single twitch of one eye and the left corner of her mouth.
She had to have been told before now about digging up her daughter, why, and by whose order. Suddenly she turned and walked away into the dark of her home, leaving the door open.
Mari hesitated at following like an intruder, but Alexandre gestured inward, and Tris nudged her from behind. She entered with twice as much reluctance.
Strangely, the place had a homey feel, though it was chill and dark with thick curtains hung over shuttered windows without panes. The little blackened hearth was unlit. She’d expected to see black-dyed, draped cloth everywhere, usually just burlap or canvas among the poor. But a red cotton cloth covered a table surrounded by simple actual chairs—chairs instead of stools or benches. Wooden cupboards lined one wall, all filled with fine but old and chipped ceramic bowls and cups.
The whole of it looked well-to-do at some past time compared with other village homes, though it hadn’t remained well-to-do in recent years. There stood Cecilia at a cutting block below the cupboard, her back turned to everyone.
Mari froze in the middle of the main room. Alexandre stepped past after closing the front door, and Tris nudged her inward again.
“Did you know Brianne was chasing after Guardsman Bródy?” the zupan asked.
Cecilia turned slowly.
“That preening pigeon?” she said without emotion. “Of course; my daughter tells me everything. Her father is long dead, and it’s been just the two of us for years.”
One thing stuck in Mari’s awareness—“tells” rather than “told.”
“You knew she’d gone to Soladran?” she asked Cecilia, anticipating what Tris might want to know.
At this, a flash of pain broke Cecilia’s flat expression.
“No,” she answered. “That I didn’t know. I was out of my mind with worry when she went missing, not knowing until she’d returned and Leif carried her here. When I saw . . . my girl . . . starved . . .”
Whatever else she said lost all voice, and Mari couldn’t read the woman’s lips.
“It isn’t fair,” Cecilia whispered.
Alexandre silently dropped his gaze.
Tris stepped around into Mari’s view.
At that, Cecilia backed against the counter and cupboard, like a cornered cat ready to strike. She glanced back once. Maybe she was looking for a butcher knife, a dough pin, or something else in the cupboard she could use as a weapon.
Mari tried to watch Cecilia as well as Tris, as he touched a pot or mug left here and there. Once, he put a hand flat against the wall and closed his eyes in stillness.
“What is he doing . . . here?” Cecilia demanded.
Mari turned back at the venom in the question. She had no idea what Tris was up to. Without warning, he waved Alexandre to follow as he abruptly left the hut, leaving Mari.
Cecilia was fixed on the men and not her.
“I . . . We thank you,” Mari muttered. “Forgive us disturbing you in mourning.”
She didn’t wait for a reply and fled. Outside, Tris had walked off toward the common house with Alexandre following. She hurried to catch up.
“Why didn’t you ask her about cut hair?”
“I do not need to ask her,” he answered without slowing.
Alexandre overtook Tris, rounding to cut him off and
make him stop.
“I asked you here through my son, but . . . ,” the zupan began. “I—my people—have had enough of your—”
“Tell him I can banish the ghost,” Tris said, still facing the zupan.
At this, Alexandre looked to Mari.
“Sixteen silver pennies is my fee,” Tris added.
Mari tried not to react.
That was more than some landed peasants could earn at year’s end, let alone anyone here. And Tris had promised her a quarter cut of his gains, four times what she’d ever had at once in her whole life.
Caught between desire and guilt, she hesitated at repeating the offer to Alexandre—but she did. He paused only briefly.
“Done,” he rasped.
—
Upon reaching the common house, Tris announced that he was “going up to rest” and slipped through the far back door to the stairs. He shut it before Mari could follow.
She heard his boots on the steps down the hallway beyond the door and then nothing. Part of her wanted to sneak up to see what he really did; another part was relieved to be rid of him for a while and still know where he was.
A third part felt only guilt and misery. This had been a difficult day, and after a life of struggling for survival, she wasn’t accustomed to noticing the suffering of others.
Walking across the room, she was about to stoke up the fire.
The place was empty of anyone; then again, these villagers wouldn’t gather here with him present. She began mulling everything he’d had her ask and what she’d heard, trying to find anything she’d missed in the moments.
With a shiver, she remembered what she heard of Brianne being touched by something “horrible and white.” She heated inside at the girl being abandoned by a man she’d thought loved her, who’d left her to walk five leagues home while she was already dying.
Then again, had she been abandoned? Mari only had the secondhand words of a bitter, jilted young man. By Gena’s account, Brianne’s ghost mouthed Cameron’s name in wanting him still. So why hadn’t she gone to him instead of haunting this place?
What would cause her to remain here after death instead of going to him?
Most people believed that ghosts remained for some unfulfilled desire. Mari had a different view by her own experience, but that didn’t mean other beliefs weren’t true. Brianne’s ghost had not hurt anyone; hadn’t even come at Mari herself last night.
Could she have unfinished business?
Tris promised he could banish that spirit, but what did that mean or involve?
Mari grew frustrated by ignorance and chucked a small log into the fireplace without even looking. The rear door of the main room suddenly opened, startling her, and Erath stepped in, carrying folded blankets.
“Oh, hello,” Erath said. “Alexandre said you’d come back. I wondered if you wanted to bathe or wash clothing?”
Mari looked about the main room, uncertain she’d heard correctly.
“Back there.” Erath pointed to the door behind her. “There’s a private room with buckets of heated water and a box tub that will drain outside.”
The thought of a bath—an actual bath—was almost incomprehensible.
Mari couldn’t remember the last time she’d even been able to soak in a washtub full of warm, if not hot, water. The problem was that this sounded too much like a favor she hadn’t asked for, and this was suspicious to her.
She glanced toward the upper level with the lofts. Of course, this offer had been made more because of him than because of her, maybe as part of the payment.
Mari didn’t like being indebted to anyone.
“Come. It won’t take long,” Erath said. “You can use the tub first. I’ve got blankets for us to wear while we dry our clothes by the fire.”
Erath wished to bathe and wash clothing too? At least this took some of the edge off. If Mari wasn’t bathing alone, then the favor wouldn’t be all due to him.
Erath reopened the door, and Mari followed her to a back room on the left, short of the stairs at the end leading upward.
By the time dusk had fallen, Mari was clean—cleaner than she’d been in years—and settled by a stoked fire in the main room. Her clothes were now dry and clean as well. She’d almost forgotten how good any of this felt, and that put her on guard again. Too many things, little comforts, kept coming her way because of Tris. She couldn’t allow herself to enjoy this, not too much. Or that in being connected to him, these people showed her respect.
Earlier, Alexandre had called her “Miss Mari,” as if she was someone who mattered.
At the sound of footsteps, she turned her head to see Tris coming through the doorway and entering the common room. Maybe he was hungry—like her—as they hadn’t eaten anything since the morning.
“Erath’s gone for food,” she said. “Some kind of communal stew.”
He settled quietly at the end of the nearest long table, and she waited for him to say something. He didn’t.
“What have you been doing?” she finally asked.
“Preparing.”
Not much of an answer, so again she’d have to wait and watch.
Erath soon returned with yet another loaded tray: this time with steaming bowls but not steaming mugs. Mari could smell ale in the mugs this time from halfway across the big room. As Erath set the tray on the table near Tris, he glanced aside.
“Tea,” he said, and returned to staring at nothing.
“Pardon?” Erath asked.
Mari flushed with embarrassment. He continued to treat Erath like a servant.
“He’s not fond of ale,” she explained, remembering what he’d said about wine. “Could you bring him some tea?”
“Of course, and you? I’ll bring bread as well, as it wasn’t sliced yet when I left.”
She swept out of the room, and Mari walked over to settle across the table from Tris. Carrots and potatoes in the stew made her think of her mother. She froze amid picking up her spoon, trying to push that thought away, and blew on the bowl’s steaming food.
Even as the smell of food—hot food—filled her senses, something else did as well.
Something smelled . . . wrong, even though she wasn’t in her other flesh.
She sat there with spoon in hand, frowning at the stew; just as she leaned down to sniff it closely, Tris dipped his spoon and raised it to his mouth.
“Stop!” she said.
Slapping the spoon from his hand, she sent it spinning along the tabletop, spattering its contents.
“What?” he asked in open surprise.
She lowered her head over her bowl and sniffed deeply. Beneath that tempting aroma was something else, just barely there—musty, pungent, and rank. She couldn’t stop a cat’s grating hiss.
“Kwo’an!” she whispered in her people’s tongue.
“What does that mean?”
Mari had learned some things about herbs and other plants from her aunt; even poisons had their uses in healing—some of them. Without lifting her head, she raised her eyes to him.
“Dropwort, numb-tongue . . . hemlock! Someone poisoned our food.”
One more time, she’d just saved her prey.
Tris’s eyes half closed as he leaned over his own bowl to smell the food. Then he sat back and shook his head slightly. Maybe only an animal or a yai-morchi—shifter—could’ve caught that under-scent.
Rising up, Mari shouted, “Erath!”
Almost instantly, the elder woman rushed back in, but before she could say a word—
“Who made this stew?” Mari demanded.
Erath flinched. “I . . . don’t . . . It was different people, at times, more than one.”
Mari was about to demand more answers, when a hand clamped on her wrist. She turned on Tris.
“Wait,” he whispered. “Is this
from a communal meal, something for the village together or for workers?”
Mari hesitated, wondering how much he had understood.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Then only our portions were laced, or perhaps the bowls themselves.”
She didn’t quite understand how he’d reasoned that.
“Do not alarm her further,” Tris warned. “Ask her who prepared our servings, her or someone else.”
Mari had already done, but she asked again.
Erath frowned, looking between the two guests. “As I said, I don’t know. The servings were ready and waiting by the time I returned from filling the mugs with ale.”
Mari tried to remain calm, not that she fully believed anything at this point. She wondered how Tris had reasoned what had really happened. Erath was still looking between them in frightened confusion. Mari related the stew had been poisoned, but that it was likely only their bowls. Erath went pale.
“Tell her I still want tea,” Tris instructed. “And bread cut from a loaf already being served.”
And again Mari did so, and again Erath rushed off. Mari settled down, watching as he slid the bowls away, down the table.
“You’re lucky I was here,” she said.
“It is not the first time,” he replied.
She stalled for an instant. “And you still eat what they give you?”
“Such a thing has been attempted when I have been called to render service,” he said. “But not often, and I must eat.”
She almost didn’t believe what she was hearing, either that someone here would risk trying to kill him or that he took it so calmly.
“I am sorry you were targeted as well,” he added.
Just the same, this village was willing to pay a hefty fee for whatever he could supposedly do.
“So who here would want you dead?” she asked.
“Someone who wants Brianne to remain.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Tris remained in the main room that night after Mari went up to the loft. Beneath all her anger, he could see she had been shaken by an attempt on their lives, though he guessed that she’d faced worse. And he neither cared if Erath believed their food had been poisoned nor sought out the culprit.