The Dead Seekers

by Barb Hendee

  Tris stopped and froze before he could close. Cotillard was larger than him, a trained soldier, and now armed.

  “Dead’s Man!” Cotillard spit. “You’ll be dead enough now, noble or not.”

  Kreenan still held on, but from the scrabbling of his boots on the wall, he could not find purchase and would not last long. Even by the sounds of other guards below, they would never find a ladder or anything else to save him in time.

  Tris was unarmed; he sank his weight into his feet and readied himself. Time with his father’s guards had taught him a few things.

  When facing larger and/or more skilled opponents, he had learned to make the other person take the first move. The element of surprise was his first defense.

  Cotillard charged, and Tris shifted his weight to his left foot, toward the inner and open edge of the wall. Cotillard stepped a little wide, toward the wall’s crenellated side, likely to get an angle of charge for driving his target toward the wall’s open edge.

  Tris used his weight-loaded left foot to lunge to the walkway’s other side, dodging the sword’s thrust and striking his opponent’s jaw as he rushed by. Then he kicked down into Cotillard’s nearer ankle.

  It almost worked.

  Cotillard stumbled, shifted weight to his outer foot, and teetered for an instant near the walkway’s inner open edge. Somehow he still slashed with the blade.

  Tris lurched away against the wall’s crenellated side. As he righted himself, Cotillard’s booted foot slammed into his left calf, and his leg buckled. Crumpling, Tris spun along and down one crenel and slammed on the stone walkway. As he was barely rolling over, a boot’s heel came at his face.

  It never connected.

  A large helmet struck and careened off Cotillard’s right cheek. As the helmet clattered and tumbled off the wall’s top, the sergeant wobbled, wide-eyed and stunned, and the flat of a broadsword’s blade smashed in his nose. His head snapped backward as he toppled, hit the walkway on his side, and began to slide over the wall’s inner edge.

  Still caught in shock, Tris rolled over too late in an attempt to grab for Cotillard’s arm.

  Someone kicked his arm aside and stepped in his way. Lost in confusion, he reared back as two more men rushed past toward the wall’s end at the gate. Two more came in from the other side but halted short and stood poised with swords in hand, ignoring him.

  When Tris looked, he saw Cotillard’s face just visible where the man clung to the walkway’s edge. His mouth and chin looked blackened by blood running out of his smashed nose. Above him stood Captain Stàsiuo, with his back turned to Tris and looking down.

  Tris could not see Stàsiuo’s face, only the back of his head, helmet missing; the broadsword was still in his hand. For a moment, Tris wondered if the recent captain would kill one of his own men, here and now.

  “Get him up,” Stàsiuo growled softly, and then louder, “And lock him up!”

  The two nearby guardsmen rushed in as the captain backstepped out of their way. Tris remembered someone else left in danger, and looked down the wall. The first pair of guards had pulled Kreenan back up. How he’d managed to hang on was unknown. Then something suddenly blocked all the brazier light, and Tris looked up.

  The captain stood over him. His face was not clear to see, but he could not be in a good mood, even as he reached down with his empty hand. Tris reached up and barely gripped that hand before he was heaved to his feet. He began to explain.

  “One of your sergeants decided to—”

  “I know what happened,” the captain interrupted. “Or did you think I wasn’t watching these two?”

  Tris stalled, at a loss. The last two of the four who had come with the captain hauled away Cotillard just as the other pair walked a wobbling Kreenan nearer. Before Tris could speak again, the captain spun on his other sergeant and grabbed the front of Kreenan’s vestment.

  “Listen up!” Stàsiuo barked. “I know everything, and Cotillard will be dealt with. As to you, I’ve been lenient, considering all that’s happened to us in the last moon. It ends now—no more drink on duty!”

  Kreenan, leaning on a comrade, dropped his gaze in whispering, “Yes, sir.”

  “Go to bed and sleep it off,” Stàsiuo ordered, and then to the other guardsman: “Desún, take his watch.”

  The second guardsman nodded and headed off toward the gate’s end of the wall, while the first led Kreenan down the walk the other way.

  Tris still hesitated; apparently the captain was aware of far more than he had first thought.

  Stàsiuo turned on him again. “And I don’t want a dead noble to explain to my superiors! You keep out of anything to do with the garrison until you clear it with me . . . my lord!”

  It appeared a title and nobility did not hold much sway with the captain.

  “So . . .” Stàsiuo took a deep, slow breath. “Is Cotillard linked to any of the other deaths, by your estimate?”

  Tris shook his head. “No. Whoever killed the others is either a spirit of the dead or someone possessed of skill and knowledge to fake such. If Cotillard were such a man, he would not have resorted to killing a rival at this stage. It was too reckless, too opportunistic.”

  “Agreed,” Stàsiuo growled. “That leaves nothing for the rest, no?”

  “No.”

  As Tris stood, facing toward the city amid failure and unnecessary complications, something more nagged at him. Where was Mari? He decided to check their quarters. That was where he had told her to meet him.

  “Captain, we should return inside,” he said.

  “Yes, for your . . . attendant?”

  Tris did not like the reference, but it served for now, and he nodded.

  —

  Upon reaching the barracks, Mari headed straight for its common room but paused in its doorway. The room was still half-full, and the men present chatted in low voices or played cards. She didn’t see Farrell, Orlov, or Rafferty, and all the women were gone. No one looked her way, and so much the better, as she was still heated from the night’s hunt.

  Bródy was still at the same table with a handful of cards, and she went straight at him.

  “We need to talk—alone.”

  He leaned back, looked over and up at her. So did the rest of those at the table, who were suddenly all quiet.

  “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he said with a lazy smirk.

  Up close, he was alarmingly handsome, his red-brown hair both thick and silky-looking, and his green eyes were flecked with brown.

  Mari wanted to rake his face off. And it wasn’t just the heat of the hunt that made it so.

  “Get up,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I’ve a decent hand for once tonight. Come and find me tomorrow.”

  One of the other men scoffed and threw his cards on the table.

  “All right, let’s do this here,” she countered. “Brianne’s dead.”

  That wiped the smile off his face. The other men exchanged glances; one whispered something to another, but she kept her eyes on him.

  Mari jutted her chin. “Out in the passage, now.”

  Still lingering, Bródy tossed down his cards and rose. He towered over her, but she didn’t back up, and he no longer looked lazy or comfortable. After three breaths, she turned without waiting, as if it meant nothing to turn her back on him. She heard him follow soon enough as she headed for the door to the back passage.

  Once beyond the door, she turned and blocked the way to cut him off. He stared at her with no expression, leaned his back against the wall, and crossed his arms.

  “Well?”

  The door was still open. Mari took one step and kicked it closed.

  “You don’t seem surprised about Brianne,” she said. “Why is that?”

  “How do you know she’s dead?”

 
; “Because I saw her body. She looked starved to death.”

  At this, his cold expression wavered. “What do you want?”

  “She came here to see you. She said something ‘horrible and white’ touched her, or so we heard. You abandoned her, and she ran for home.”

  “Abandoned her?” he repeated. “Who told you that?”

  “Her betrothed, Leif.”

  He straightened up. “That pockmarked cripple? And you believed him?”

  “I don’t have a reason not to.” She looked him up and down. “Still don’t.”

  She could see that he counted on his looks to deal with women, and she was getting tired of this.

  “The man I came with is hunting that something horrible, and you’re going to help him stop it.”

  Mari couldn’t stop the slight rise of her other form amid her heat. Everything in the passage grew brighter. Every sound from his breathing—her breathing—to the chatter in the common was loud in her ears. His heartbeats were quicker, and she could smell his fear.

  “What did you see that night?” she asked. “If you stuck around.”

  He hesitated again, but she heard his breath catch.

  “I didn’t invite her. She showed up,” he said, quieter this time. “Hadn’t planned for it, being seen together that night, so I took her out and around the stable.”

  “Why? Who would’ve seen you?”

  He didn’t answer that, and instead said, “She asked what I would do if she broke off her engagement to Leif.”

  This didn’t matter much, and it wasn’t any surprise. Someone like him too easily turned innocent but foolish young women—girls—away from better men.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know, still don’t.” His gaze sharpened. “I cared for Brianne, probably more than she knew, but I don’t make promises I might not keep.”

  “I’m so impressed. Then what?”

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  “That thing appeared,” he finally said. “A ghost . . . spirit . . . whatever you call it. It came at me first, one hand outstretched.”

  Him first? Why?

  “What did it look like? Man? Woman?”

  “Man,” he bit off.

  “Did you recognize him?”

  Bródy broke eye contact, looking away. “No . . . or I don’t think so. He was white, somewhat see-through, and like he’d nearly starved before he died. Maybe a beggar, since his clothes were tattered, and he had a head wound.”

  Mari pondered this—starved but wounded? So which had killed the man in the end?

  “What kind of wound? What did it look like?”

  He frowned and appeared to grow even more uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Something blunt, not edged.”

  All she could think of after that was forcing better answers out of him. Just one good slash across his handsome face.

  “Which side of his head?”

  Bródy blinked, maybe confused. “The left . . . or on my left, meaning his right side.”

  If she’d given in and ripped into him now, she would’ve started with her right hand—paw—into his left cheek. Maybe it didn’t matter, but that meant whoever had attacked the man had been left-handed, if he’d been facing his attacker.

  “Did you recognize him?”

  Bródy exhaled, shaking his head. “Maybe. I don’t know. Every other moon or so, people . . . refugees try to cross the field, reach the border stream, and escape. We’re not allowed to help until they’re into that stream.”

  “Not allowed? Why not?”

  “It’s not as if those petty lords over there could start a real war with us, but the nobility here doesn’t want to face the first slaughter should someone in the Warlands think otherwise. We’re not allowed to interfere or help until someone’s in the stream. They try to cross here at the gate because they know we’ll be waiting to protect them.”

  Absorbing this, Mari tilted her head and didn’t interrupt. She didn’t see him as any kind of hero either.

  “The ghost might have been someone who tried to cross,” he said. “But I don’t know. He just looked . . . somehow familiar. As if maybe someone I saw once running toward us. Most don’t make it before they are run down by a Warlands soldier or his horse.”

  Struck down from behind? That suddenly made it worse.

  If the spirit had been struck from the front, this would mark the killer as left-handed. From the back, that would be right-handed and far too common to help identify a killer. Not that this would matter if the ghost was one of the refugees who’d been running toward the stream and the only hope of freedom.

  “You stood and just watched?” she asked coldly.

  For the first time, he showed open anger and straightened up. “We can’t interfere until they reach the stream! The colonel’s orders, and he is—was—right. Doing otherwise puts our people—our city—on the front line of a possible war. We would lose far more than we’d save.”

  Mari almost sympathized—almost. “So you think this ghost . . . man was a refugee who didn’t make it across?”

  Bródy stood there too long and looked away. “I don’t know. They have all started to look the same, too much alike.”

  She tried not to wince.

  “That night with Brianne,” he went on without any prodding, “that spirit came after me, at least first. But it stopped when it noticed her. I swear its eyes narrowed and it looked back at me and again to her. I couldn’t move, and she backed away, shouting at it, calling to it, trying to get it away from me.”

  Mari’s stomach tightened.

  His voiced turned shaky. “It rushed her . . . and its hand went for—through—her throat. She couldn’t even scream. And then I tried to reach her. The ghost turned on me. It smiled and vanished.” He stopped talking briefly. “I’ve never seen anything like that smile before—cold, vicious, spiteful. When I got my wits back, I tried to go after Brianne, but she was gone. I couldn’t find her.”

  Mari wondered about the last part, and maybe he saw this in her face.

  “I didn’t abandon her!” he insisted. “She ran.”

  “Was she still trying to draw it off?”

  Bródy stalled, brow wrinkling as if he was trying to think. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  But he’d never gone far enough to find out what became of her.

  Mari wanted to demand answers for that, but her thoughts turned to something else. She might have details she’d missed or didn’t understand. Tris might know better, if she’d even asked the right questions.

  “Come with me,” she said. “Tris—my lord—is likely retired by now, and he’s the hunter. I’ll translate, and you will tell him all of this and answer any question from him.”

  “There’s nothing more I haven’t told you.”

  “I’m not asking.” She backstepped to the passage’s far wall, waiting.

  Bródy watched her for a moment. With a resigned huff, he headed down the passage.

  She didn’t have to lead him. By now, everyone in the barracks would know where the Dead’s Man, noble or not, was lodged. A few guards looked up and watched as they passed through the first bunk room. Then they passed through the second and down the shorter way to the room she shared with Tris.

  Dim as the passage was at night, Mari looked up at a soft but sudden glow ahead beyond Bródy. He stopped, and she heard him suck a breath.

  Only her instinct made her grab his arm and wrench him out of her way.

  Mari stared at the white, transparent form as it sharpened in her sight.

  Tattered clothing covered a bone-thin man, white skin stretched tight over his skull and jaw. The right side of his head near the temple was dark, like it’d been smashed open and bled down his face.

  His mouth opened wide—and then wider.<
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  His sunken eyes shifted from her to Bródy, and his mouth widened even more.

  Mari could only guess what would come next. She couldn’t protect Bródy any more than she could protect herself. Grabbing Bródy’s tabard, she wrenched him back down the passage.

  Tris had said she was lucky or something like in surviving Brianne’s contact. She thought it was something else. Either way, she hoped one or both of them were right.

  Everything in the passage lit up as fear called to her other flesh.

  Only one cry escaped her as fury welled up.

  “Tris!”

  —

  Tris paced between the beds in the room assigned to himself and Mari. Upon returning here earlier, and not finding her, he had walked the entire length of the barracks and then gone back out to the city’s edge, looking for her. Peering out into the city streets, he knew he would not find her by leaving the barracks grounds. Soladran was too immense.

  Instead, he returned to this room.

  Ceasing his pacing, he sat and pulled off his boots. But he could not rest. He should have sent Mari away—for her own sake—before coming to this place. He should not have brought her here.

  “Tris!”

  His breath caught at that angry cry, making him think of the lynx he had once chased through a forest. Rushing to the door, he ripped it open.

  “Tris!”

  He lunged into the dark passage, and strangely it was not as dark as when he had returned. Turning left, then right, he did not spot her. Instead he was transfixed by the back of a spirit lighting up the passageway.

  Beyond the grotesque spirit, Mari was backing away while shoving someone else behind her.

  Tris lunged forward, both hands ready to rake and tear the spirit to ethereal shreds. His hands clawed nothing but air, and the passage dimmed sharply as the spirit shot straight through its left wall.

  “No!” Tris whispered.

  He slapped both hands against that wall. On its other side were his quarters. In a quick glance, he saw Mari still on her feet and wide-eyed. Her shock wore off before his, and she charged toward him.

  He reached their quarters first, and just inside, he slid to a stop in his stockings.