by Barb Hendee
Yet he could not stop thinking on Mari, the mystery of her, or why he had not sent her away.
She had proved herself useful during the questioning in the village, more so than even Heil on the times the apothecary had come with him. People were cautious around Heil, regardless that he spoke the local dialects. He was too learned and skilled for villagers to see him as one of their own.
They were far more open in Mari’s presence.
Tris had followed enough of the verbal exchanges to see this. Not having to struggle with the language barrier had been a relief and an advantage with her presence. Without knowing what she sought, she had exposed much concerning those who were connected to Brianne.
Soon enough, he’d pieced together what had happened with Brianne—or at least most of it—and he knew what to do as soon as enough time had passed tonight.
Yet, his thoughts remained on Mari. Who was she and why had she agreed to remain with him, especially after that first visitation in the loft the night before? When he had offered her a quarter of the fee, her expression and demeanor had grown so intense he thought he’d somehow insulted her.
Then he realized the truth.
Regardless of her clear longing to accept, something else had been pushing her to refuse, perhaps vehemently. She was a creature of extremes, and he had more than once ignorantly stepped in between those. For him, the fees from these hunts meant little to nothing.
He charged people only because they expected it and would be suspicious otherwise. That, and because he would take no money from his family. With the exception of a few coins he kept for his own needs, anything else he earned went to Heil for food and rent.
Other than fluency in multiple dialects, Mari seemed to possess limited skills to offer, though this evening had been different. He would have sensed he had been poisoned soon enough to go after the remedies and antitoxins he always carried from Heil. Still, she had saved him from that suffering and being left vulnerable.
She wanted neither help nor charity nor friendship. That much was clear, and companionship was not something he could risk anyway. She served herself and her own needs first, but she was capable. However, for the rest of the task at hand tonight, he was better off without her presence.
And so he waited.
He watched the fire burn lower and lower. When only a faint flame remained, he headed for the front door, leaving his heavy cloak behind. The night was nearly frigid, but he needed to be unencumbered for his coming task.
—
Mari lay awake and fully clothed on her mat as she listened to every little sound. She heard the common house’s timbers and the tree limbs outside creaking softly as the temperature dropped lower and lower. For a long while, that and the distant crackle of the fire in the main room below at the building’s far end were all that she heard.
And he still hadn’t come up to bed.
The longer she waited, the more she knew he wouldn’t tonight. She’d prepared for that. The soft squeal of a half-frozen metal hinge carried faintly through the common house. And only a mäth’ka—one of the “cat-kind” among the yai-morchi—could’ve heard that.
Mari rolled onto all fours without a sound and crept under the blanket curtains. After rising, she went to where the roof’s slant met a shin’s length of front wall rising above the loft’s timber floor. Before lying down to not sleep, she’d bored a tiny hole between two wall planks with the tip of her blade. Pressing her face to the wall, she peered out through that tiny hole.
The Dead’s Man was already slipping away through the dark village.
He didn’t skulk very well, though he kept to deeper darkness near any dwelling. She watched long enough to gauge his direction and speed. Just before he slipped from her sight, she spun, rose, and passed through the curtains toward her belongings.
Mari picked up her blade. She pulled it from the sheath to see that it slid freely, and then shoved it, sheath and all, into her belt and rushed downstairs to follow him.
—
Tris made his way quietly but directly to the dwelling of Brianne’s mother, Cecilia. He had known within moments of meeting her that she was the one who had cut the girl’s hair before burial. Not by grief’s madness in her eyes; not by sorrow and loss greater than that of Gena or Leif; and not even for the angry, desperate edge in her voice.
During all the questioning, most of which Tris had not understood in the moment, Cecilia had never moved from her place before the cupboard. When Mari had asked if Cecilia knew of Guardsman Bródy from her daughter, the woman had answered with “tells” rather than “told me everything.” Perhaps this was just a slip in a quick answer, maybe revealing or not.
She’d remained before the cupboard, even backing nearer to it when he surveyed the hut’s interior, as if guarding something precious hidden away. And then had come that glance back at the cupboard.
He had not seen a worthwhile weapon there, let alone any reason for her to glance away from the intruders in her home. In that same moment, with his own hand flattened against the wall, he had felt the permutations of something other than the living.
Something dead had entered that place recently—and not a corpse.
This awareness was one thing on a long list involving his own nature that he had never been able to explain. In the beginning, it had been unnatural, frightening . . . revolting. Only later, upon meeting Heil, had he learned to accept it.
Tris reached Cecilia’s home, slipped around back, and closed his eyes to listen.
Upon hearing nothing, he crouched down in stillness. The window at the hut’s front would be the most accessible place, but timing was everything when hunting the dead, especially one held in bondage by a loved one. This situation was even more complicated, but all that mattered was freeing the living from the dead. That was why he had been called.
One of Heil’s earliest rebukes came to mind: Your ability is natural, so don’t waste it . . . or my time in assisting you!
The first encounter with the alchemist masquerading as an apothecary had forever altered Tris’s life. Ironically, he had his cousin Alaina to thank in an indirect manner. After what she had seen in the rose garden—of the boy ghost and him—she never again let him near enough to touch her. But she must have told her mother what had happened, what she had seen, though Aunt Ellen had said nothing then.
In the following summer, when Tris turned eighteen, a letter addressed to him arrived. It was unsettling to see that it came from his aunt.
My Dear Tris,
I hope this missive finds you well. I am sorry that you and Alaina never became as close as I had hoped, but I have wanted for too long to thank you for my daughter’s life.
It comes too late, I know.
I hope you do not find my request below odd.
But years past, my maid Patera left to wed the owner of a candle shop in Ceskú, about four leagues east of Bela. We still correspond once per moon, and her last letter disturbed me. Ceskú faces a similar horror to the one you faced for my dear Alaina.
A murderer who was beheaded there last moon now plagues that place as a vengeful spirit. Apples rot upon trees, milk drawn from cattle sours instantly, and two people have been paralyzed by the spirit’s touch. The mayor hired an herbalist who is said to have knowledge of such unnatural blights, but so far, this man has been unsuccessful.
I have no right to ask anything of you.
But I beg you, just the same. Please help my Patera and her family. You are the only one I could think to ask.
Your loving Aunt Ellen
Tris had held the letter in his hand for so long. He read it at least five times. She asked him to do again what he had done for her daughter by an accident of instinct.
What had he done? Could he do so again without knowing?
That same night, he packed and quietly left the manor without telling
anyone; he left only a note for his mother saying he would return soon. The journey took lonely days and nights, though it gave him some relief in solitude. He arrived in Ceskú in late afternoon, asking the shy and suspicious townsfolk where he could find the local candle shop. When he did find it, Patera had been expecting him.
She welcomed him kindly as the nephew of her former employer. But this was the first time he looked into eyes staring back in hope and fear. Some of that fear was for him—some of him.
He had no idea how to hunt a spirit.
The following night, he was awakened by screams somewhere in the town. When he rose, he hesitated, but no one in Patera’s house came out of their rooms. The door of her and her husband’s bedchamber remained closed in silence.
Tris barely left the house when another scream sounded in the dark night, drowning every other sound. He ran toward it and spotted dim red-orange light wavering out of the open bay doors of a dirt-floored smithy. Rushing to those doors, he first found a young, shirtless man twitching on the floor, a forge hammer either dropped or tossed aside nearby. Before he could crouch next to the man, he saw a disheveled girl backed into a far corner behind a scarred and burned wooden workbench.
Her quivering mouth gaped under eyes that never blinked and did not look at him. This time no scream came out of her, and he followed those wide eyes to the smithy’s far side.
There, in the darkness lit only by the forge’s dim glow, he saw a white, transparent form without a head.
It drifted straight toward the girl through the forge, coals and all.
Tris had no time to guess at what else had happened here, or why a girl was in this smithy at night, but he had no fear of the spirit. None at all. He lunged in two steps without thinking and shouted.
“Here! Look at me!”
The white form beyond the forge turned his way. Its headless body was shirtless and muscular, and the opaque shapes of chainless shackles were on its wrists. The smithy became so quiet that Tris went still where he stood.
What should he do now?
Everything that had happened in facing the boy ghost with Alaina had . . . just happened. It was not happening this time.
The headless spirit rushed at him straight through the forge.
The girl screamed.
Tris raised his hands, ready to hold off the headless man, if he could. Cold, white, thick hands as transparent as vapor went straight through his own and latched around his throat.
Determination turned to shock when he felt those grips crushing into his flesh and then bone. His breath was cut off. If the girl screamed again, he did not hear it. He tried to latch hold of the spirit’s wrists.
Unlike with the boy ghost, his hands went straight through, as through icy mist.
This was not the way it had happened the last time, and he could not protect anyone if he could not protect himself.
Me . . . not you . . . I Tris . . . not you, Tris . . .
Everything became worse when he heard the whispers again.
Beyond the headless spirit, night within the smithy gathered and swallowed the forge’s dim glow. It turned and turned in a darkening whirlpool hanging in the air.
. . . my Tris . . . me Tris . . . not you . . . Tris . . .
He stared into that swirling void beyond over the headless spirit’s stump of a neck. It manifested just as it had before, on the night with Alaina. Had he called it up again somehow?
. . . my Tris . . . my life . . . not yours . . . Tris . . .
Unable to breathe, he tried again to grab the spirit’s wrists. His fingers sank in like gripping winter-chilled water. It did not matter how that opening into death had formed again; it was his only hope. He planted both hands against the spirit’s chest.
His fingers and palms sank again, but this time like in thawing mud. The void beyond the ghost spun in place, and Tris shoved with his whole body.
That murderer’s ghost gave ground.
He struck outward with both arms against its grips upon his throat. Those grips faltered, and he slammed his palms against its chest—solid to his touch this time. Both grips broke, he gasped a needed breath, and then he heard running footsteps halt behind him.
“My gods . . .”
He did not dare turn at that low male voice speaking strangely accented Belaskian. Instead he shoved even harder. The headless one lurched back but not enough and then came at him again.
A white wisp shot past him . . . and another . . . and another.
They swirled in the smithy’s air, and he lost focus as one dove at his face. He ducked and then did feel a hint of fear. He had not seen those since that night at the manor when he was thirteen.
“I will deal with the pests,” that strange voice barked to him, this time in Stravinan. “You get Silas into that . . . that portal!”
The headless one grabbed for Tris’s head with both of its hands.
“No fear! That is what they need—want—and it can kill just as quickly.”
Tris stalled at that shout, and the spirit gripped his head. Cold sank into his skull like none he had ever felt in any winter. He flattened both of his hands into its chest and thrust with his legs.
“Harder—now!”
Tris needed no urging. Inch by inch, he gained ground on the black void, driving the headless one toward it. He had no fear of this headless ghost.
But somewhere beyond that opening into death waited the other him.
The headless one began to tear apart. That murderer’s spirit shredded like tatters of threadbare cloth. Pieces spun in a swirl, sucked into the pure black before Tris’s eyes. This time, he did not back away.
He wanted to see what was in there—in that black void.
Someone grabbed the back of his vestments and yanked.
Tris spun, stumbled, tripped, and fell in a tumble across the smithy’s dirt floor.
“Are you stupid, boy?”
At that sharp retort, he righted himself and looked back, but not to whoever had shouted at him. The last of the black void drained like swirling ink, sucked into a hole in the world, and vanished. Not one white wisp still raced about the smithy. Everything became so quiet—enough to hear boots shift on the dirt.
A sigh made Tris flinch and look up.
An elder man stood close by, smirking down at him. Dressed in well-groomed attire, from charcoal-colored felt vestment to chocolate-toned canvas pants and high black leather boots, he had a long face curtained by silver-gray hair glimmering by forge light. Fifty years old at a guess, he was poorly shaved.
Tris had seen men who did not care to shave; they sheared back facial hair whenever it grew long enough to do so. In the man’s left hand, dangling at his side, he held a round and flat silvery disk more than a hand’s length in diameter. Strange, engraved markings lined its outer edge. Again, Tris looked about for any remaining white wisps in the dim smithy.
All had vanished, and he glanced at the disk again.
“Who are you?” he asked in Old Stravinan.
The man slowly dropped to one knee and snorted with a half smile.
“Heilman Tavakovich,” he answered in Tris’s preferred language. “Most around these parts know me as Heil.”
Tris again studied the strange silver-gray plate. “What is that?”
“An Ether shield,” the man answered, “fashioned by four of the five elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The void of the fifth—Spirit—gives it the power to leach Spirit from whatever it touches. Thereby it can . . . repel ghosts.”
Tris was still staring at the plate; though he had understood every word, little of it registered but for one thing in that moment.
“It is possible to make weapons to use against spirits?”
The man rolled his eyes. “Do you see any spirits left? However, you got rid of one with your . . . natural talent.�
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Tris had never heard the word “natural” applied to anything about him. This man seemed to know more about what had just happened—more than he or anyone he had ever met. That was disturbing, and none of what had happened appeared to startle this man.
“I am—”
“I know who you are, baron’s boy. Even if not, there were those whispers as well.”
Tris went suddenly chill. This man had heard the whispers? No one could have known he had come here, and no one but him knew of the black one. Even those who had been present when it entered the living world were all dead.
“You . . . heard . . . it?”
Perhaps the elder man chuckled, though it sounded more like he had cleared his throat. He flipped the silver-gray disk, catching it like a toy, and shrugged.
“Your aunt thought you’d need assistance,” Heil said casually. “Or some guidance, though to date, I’ve yet to hear of someone who could grip a ghost.”
Explanations aside, all of this was too much in the moment for Tris. Was this man the “herbalist” that his aunt had mentioned? Had she told this Heilman anything about what had happened with Alaina? What he had come here to do?
And this Heilman had heard the black one?
Tris glanced again at the disk in the man’s hand.
Heilman—or Heil, if he preferred—arched his back, as if stretching out a kink.
“Don’t just sit there,” he grumbled. “Pick yourself up.”
Hesitantly, Tris did so. After another long moment of staring at Heil, he looked around the smithy. The girl and the downed man were both gone.
“She dragged him off,” Heil said, turning away for the door. “Likely that’ll be the last she does for him—or to him—after his wife hears about this.”
Again, Tris stalled at this stranger taking everything that had happened as if it were commonplace. When he finally hurried to follow outside, he rounded Heil wide, watching the man carefully. All the would-be apothecary did was flick his hand for Tris to lead onward. So he did, but not without too many glances back, until Heil caught up and walked beside him.