by Barb Hendee
She rose, slapped the blanket-curtain aside and the next across the center path, but his space was empty. The blanket there was folded up next to the bedroll and his gear, as if he hadn’t been there all night. When she turned back, she started to shake . . . to vibrate all over.
It wouldn’t stop, and her mouth was filled with an acrid, metallic taste that made her gag. She started spitting to clear the taste.
Her spit on the floor was colored a rusty green.
What was that?
She stuck a finger in her mouth. Under her tongue was a clump of something. She scraped it out, and her finger was coated in a paste colored like her spit.
With no other choice, she headed down the stairs and heard muted voices, which made her run down the passage to the front room. When she slammed through the end door, there he was.
Tris turned, suddenly startled where he stood on the near side of the farthest table. On the table’s opposite side, nearer the front door, stood Erath, Zupan Alexandre, and others as well. Alexandre looked over, as did Erath and the others.
Tris stared at Mari as if shocked that she’d appeared. He looked bad to her, as if he hadn’t slept in days or nights. By light sneaking under the door and through the splits of the shutters, it was well into morning. So what had he been doing since last night?
And what had happened last night?
Noisy peasants babbling all around made him cringe, though he didn’t look away from her. Likely he hadn’t understood most of what anyone said or asked of him. The way he kept looking at her, so concerned, kept her stalled in the hallway’s door.
“It’s done, then?” Alexandre demanded of her.
At first, she didn’t know whether to answer, but she nodded. That much she did remember from last night.
Tris strode around the other two tables toward her. The worry in his narrow features made her wary.
“You left Cecilia lying in the street,” Erath said quietly, almost accusingly.
Mari’s gaze twitched to the elder woman. Yes, now she remembered that as well, and Tris neared, still watching her. The grieving mother had gone after him, though Mari couldn’t quite remember what else.
“Sorry about that,” she said to Erath.
Erath’s expression softened a little, and Mari tried to remember more. Had there been a fight?
“But Brianne is gone?” Alexandre pressed.
Halfway to Mari, Tris stalled and looked back, likely catching only the name. Obviously he hadn’t made anything clear to these people. He turned back.
“Are you . . . well enough?” he whispered.
He looked doubtful. She wasn’t even sure what had happened to her—or how she’d gotten to bed.
“Yes,” she answered.
He relaxed a little and whispered, “Please clarify for them.”
Mari hesitated but looked to Erath and Alexandre. “Brianne is gone. I saw him . . . send her off.”
Erath closed her eyes in relief or grief or both. Reactions differed among the others, whom Mari didn’t know. She watched and listened as Alexandre explained to them, but Tris still studied her.
Under his exhausted gaze, Mari remembered something else she’d heard last night, something Cecilia had said.
A hunter was called to kill you, my child. This time forever!
Mari began to shake slightly. Though she was still chilled to the bone, fury began heating her within. She thought of her family and that black thing in the Wicker Woods—him—who had taken everyone who mattered to her.
“Your payment.”
Mari twitched at a chink of coins.
Alexandre had dropped a small pouch upon the table closest to the front door. The others around him except Erath turned away for the door. Whispering among themselves, each stole a last glance at the Dead’s Man—and at Mari.
“You’ll be on your way, then?” Alexandre asked.
It wasn’t really a question.
“Yes,” Mari answered, as it was most likely true. Nobody wanted them—him—here anymore.
Now that the village’s ghost was gone, these people were in a hurry to be rid of the one who’d done the deed.
With a curt nod, the zupan steered his wife toward the door.
“I left warm rolls for you,” Erath called over one shoulder.
Then they were gone, and Mari was alone with Tris. She glanced toward the far end of the first table, and rolls weren’t all that Erath had left on a wooden platter.
“Are you certain you are well enough to be up?”
All her muscles tightened at the concern in his voice, false as it had to be. He hadn’t even looked at the pouch Alexandre had dropped.
Why?
She stepped wide around, still watching him until she gained some distance. That appeared to worry him again.
“Are you sure you—”
“Stop asking that,” she cut him off.
Reaching the first long table, she didn’t pick up the pouch. Instead, she looked to the table’s far end. A bowl of broth for dipping sat with four rolls along with two steaming mugs. But she didn’t feel hungry, though she should’ve, and she turned about.
“What did you do to that girl, her spirit?”
. . . this time forever!
“Banished her back to the dead. Why?”
He was lying, if Cecilia was right, and Mari remembered Brianne tearing apart into that darkness darker than the night.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “Gone for good? Dead forever?”
Her mouth began watering again with that foul metallic taste.
He quick-stepped toward her. “Do not swallow!”
Mari faced him in a half crouch. “What’d you do to me?” She spit on the floor.
“The only thing I could,” he answered. “Do not swallow it, though it should not—”
“What did you put in my mouth?”
“Something to save you. Though it only worked once before.”
“Save me from what? You? From what you did out there . . . to that dead girl?”
His exhausted eyes locked wide.
“No, from her,” he answered, “from the spirit.”
Mari shook her head in confusion.
“A spirit that agitated is deadly by a mere touch,” he continued. “All the more after someone’s own fear peaks in facing the dead. Especially a type—a form of death—that cannot be stopped by the living.”
Something in his words did make sense. Something cold had struck her, something she hadn’t seen, as she’d rushed for the hut’s door.
“I did not know you followed me, again,” he added slowly, as if speaking tired him more. “You should not have. That is why I left without you . . . one less person to watch over. Brianne must have collided with—through—you . . . when she fled through the hut’s front wall.”
Mari remembered that deep cold striking her, eating her away, until she fell in the dark.
“Rinse your mouth.” He pointed at the mugs. “Do not swallow until the taste is gone.”
He continued staring at her, as if amazed that she stood there alive at all.
Something more of last night came back.
Cecilia had gone after him with a knife.
At that, all of Mari’s fury had doubled, cut through the cold in her flesh with its own heat. Some other predator had tried to take her prey. For that, both halves of her couldn’t—wouldn’t—die and let that happen.
Mari stalked along the table and grabbed one steaming mug of herb-steeped water. She rinsed her mouth and spit on the floor, over and over, until the water was clear. Looking at the rolls and the broth, she still couldn’t find enough hunger to eat.
There had been no fear, no terror in her last night, for she’d never seen Brianne coming. There was only her fury—and long grief—
and desperate need to establish enough certainty to kill him.
But a greater fear was rising. Now that he’d completed his task here, he would be going home. She was not ready to leave him yet. She hadn’t yet learned the truth. But how could she possibly justify walking south with him? What reason could she give?
Picking up the pouch, she held it out.
He glanced at it as if momentarily confused. “Oh . . . Take out your share first.”
After a slow breath, Mari removed four coins, the money she had earned, and handed him the rest.
“So, now you go back home to Strîbrov?” she asked.
“No. I’m going to Soladran, to the barracks there.”
Her heart jumped. “Why?”
“To find out what it was that touched Brianne and caused her death.” He paused and asked carefully, “Are you still traveling north?”
With a mix of relief and trepidation, she saw a chance to remain with him and learn more. “I am. I could walk with you. There is safety in numbers.”
“That is true.”
A short while later, they were both packed and ready to leave. She loaded the warm rolls into her own satchel and then slung it over her shoulder.
Tris walked to the door and went outside. As he turned to leave the village, she fell into step beside him.
CHAPTER SIX
Mari led the way back toward the main road, listening for his footsteps following behind her, making sure he was close enough.
He seemed tired today, and his pace was slow.
They stopped several times for him to rest. At one point, she made him eat a roll she’d stashed away. As they finally reached the main road and turned northward, doubts about the previous night still nagged her, and she half turned.
“When did you know Brianne’s mother called her back with that hair? And how?”
He dropped his satchel and plopped down next to it without answering. In daylight, except for his pale face and light eyes, everything about him looked so dark.
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“Yes.”
“So?”
He was silent a moment longer. “There are rituals. Most require something personal from the deceased to recall a loved one. Hair is the easiest, and the least gruesome to acquire. Sometimes a ritual is unnecessary, if desire is overwhelming.”
Where had he learned this? And she hadn’t missed his choice of two words: loved one.
“But why would Cecilia do that?” Mari asked. Even with her own long grief, she didn’t understand. “What good was it to her?”
Tris tilted his head aside. He frowned slightly. “It does not matter.”
“Everything matters, everything we do,” she countered, and then, in a whisper: “Everything.”
Tris struggled up, grabbed his pack, slung it over one shoulder, and walked on, away from her.
Mari stood shocked for a breath.
She rushed after him, grabbed his arm, and jerked him around. He wrenched free and turned on her. She backstepped once, ready to draw her dagger if necessary. Right now, she wanted answers.
“Brianne wasn’t dangerous,” she challenged. “She didn’t seem the kind of spirit to hurt anyone, even for what happened to me. So what did you do to her?”
“As I told you, I sent her back into death, however you or anyone chooses to envision that. The dead do not belong among the living, for they only bring misery or . . .” He faltered, perhaps held back something, and then said, “Or more death.”
She wasn’t letting up. “And how’d you do that? How can you grip a ghost?”
“I do not know,” he answered tiredly.
“How can you not know?”
His expression turned even darker as he lunged a step in on her.
“And what of you, shifter?”
“Yai-morchi!”
After a pause of locked glares, he continued.
“As you wish, but do you know why you were born that way? Have you reasoned this out? Has anyone among your people ever done so?”
Mari couldn’t answer. Yes, her people had beliefs about this—only beliefs. In some ways, she’d been blessed.
Better to be born a “shifter”—yai-morchi, two-fleshed—than a “mocker”—yai-dôytri, two-minded—let alone a “tween”—yai-urvai, two-spirited. Mockers . . . yai-dôytri . . . were the cursed ones who changed only in mind. Little more than wild animals trapped in human form, they recognized only their most loved ones, and sometimes not even those.
Not like her.
In one flesh or the other, she was always . . . Mari.
“I thought not,” he added, before she could gather an answer to his challenge. “But I do know the dead do not belong among the living! Not for any reason.”
His tone had changed to match his spite. For him, hunting the dead seemed a feud he wouldn’t let go until one or the other side was gone. The problem was that he saw all ghosts as the same.
Mari wasn’t so sure.
Even more, it troubled her that he could take hold of them. What did that make him if not like them in some way? This unsettled her all the more, and the title of Dead’s Man took on more meaning.
But if like her, he’d been born this way, without a choice . . .
Her thoughts went blank in a held breath. When had she started thinking of him as anything more than that black spirit, now somehow hiding in flesh?
Somewhat like she could in her other flesh.
They both fell silent again as they walked on. She couldn’t stop dwelling on old pain, old furies. If he was the one who murdered her family . . .
Unwanted memories pushed up, though she struggled—and failed—to put them down.
As a child, she’d been passed off from one Móndyalítko family or clan to the next. None wanted her around after learning about the Wicker Woods. It didn’t matter even after she’d learned to shut up and say nothing about it. Sooner or later, at some passing or gathering of families or clans, bits of the truth came out.
This went on so long that later she could barely remember the names of the first ones who’d taken her in. Even so, she’d always been listening for any mention of the one who’d done this to her and hers.
Blacky . . . Ebony Einan . . . Shade of the Night . . .
Death’s Boy . . .
That thing ended up with so many names through all the rumors and tales that traveled quickly among her kind. There were worse ghost tales to frighten most children, but none were as bad for her.
And that was the way it was for years.
She could’ve increased her value among her people if she’d revealed herself as a yai-morchi. But she didn’t. Her secret was one of the few things that belonged to her. Alone in the forests, she began shifting and hunting for herself, eating raw, wet, and hot in her other flesh or waiting to cook what she’d caught away from anyone else.
Mari never told anyone. Why should she hunt for them if they didn’t want her?
One night, when she was fourteen, while camped with a family from the line of Džugi clan, she made a plan. She stole and hid a burlap sack, and then night by night stuffed it with a blanket, food, a flint, a small knife, and anything else needed that she could steal.
Then she was gone, and she never went back.
And the years passed.
She’d sought stories of spirits, ghosts, unnatural dead things that preyed on the living. Another cold night when she’d barely passed twenty years old, she was drinking tea and eating soup, this time in a remote tavern. Someone at another table whispered not so quietly about “the Dead’s Man.”
All in black—black as the dark—he called spirits to himself and commanded them. One of a kind, he was the only one in all of the Farlands—Stravina included—who possessed such power over spirits of the dead.
Mari
sat still and silent, her spoon hovering above the wooden bowl. She didn’t finish that meal. She began searching for more tales of the Dead’s Man. And a few scant years later . . .
She might be walking beside him right now.
How could it not be this Tris, who commanded—gripped—spirits? Yet nothing he’d done or said had offered certain proof—if she killed him—that she had the right man.
She still needed certainty.
She needed to know that she could finally escape grief through revenge.
“What’s wrong?”
Mari was startled to awareness.
He was watching her as they walked. Had her face given her dark thoughts away?
“Nothing,” she answered.
He looked pale to the point of being white.
“Do you need another rest?” she asked.
“No.”
They continued north. At first they passed only sparse travelers on the road, most on horseback or driving wagons. Tris always slipped off to one side until any horses passed, though she saw a few buck slightly, snort, and whip their heads until they got past him. For the most part, he ignored them and returned to the road once the horses were out of sight.
And the two of them kept walking in silence most of the time.
Mari knew Soladran was getting close when more and more people on foot or on horses or in wagons began to pass by. Tris moved as far as he could to one side of the road and stayed there. Not long after, the city’s front gates appeared ahead.
“Do you know Soladran?” he asked.
Mari answered without thinking. “Yes. Some of the families that I’d . . .”
She’d almost let slip that some families she’d been with had performed regularly in Soladran. That was how most Móndyalítko earned coin for commerce with outsiders, versus barter and trade among their own kind. They put on shows with music, dance, storytelling, and sleight-of-hand magic, with a bit of fortune-telling thrown in, as locals expected of “those people.”
Tris was still watching her, waiting for her to finish what she hadn’t said.
“So?” he asked.
“A few times. I didn’t pay much attention, though.”