A Haven in Ash

by Robert J. Crane

He paused, looking into her red-rimmed eyes. “You stay here. I can find him alone.”

  Her mouth opened, closed, a runner of thick saliva between her lips from her crying. Then she shook her head, violently, sending her hair down onto this side of her shoulders. For now, she did not right it.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  He understood. Not with Baraghosa—but to help find him. It would be their last jaunt together.

  They ventured out into the night. Jasen did not look at the gathered villagers in the assembly hall as he passed, and least of all the woman who’d manhandled him and Alixa to the front of the crowd. He was doing this for a good greater than him, and one look at her, victorious and unaffected, could be enough to overturn this choice, shifting him to spite.

  People were still collected on the streets outside, though the crowd was smaller than when Jasen had last been out here. They clustered, some engaged in low conversation, others simply tense, watching the assembly hall or casting eyes over the night as they waited.

  “Are you the boy Baraghosa chose?” one asked as Jasen slipped out.

  He did not answer, though another did: “Yes, that’s him—the Rabinn boy.”

  “You’re too late,” the first called to Jasen’s receding back. “He’s already gone. No sign of him.”

  “No food for my daughter now!” Mrs. Aber shrieked from down the way. She was stricken, as though she’d been crying an hour already, and Jasen turned back to catch a sight of her anguished face, mouth turned down at the corners as far as it would go.

  Alixa tightened her hold on Jasen’s wrist, pulling him back around. “Ignore them.”

  Were it so easy.

  They turned down a side street which was empty, and down another, pulling away from Terreas’s village center. Jasen wanted to take advantage of the incline, angling themselves so that they had a clear view of the night, not one blocked by rooftops and chimneys, only a handful of which now sighed thin trails of smoke into the heavens. He needed to get out to where he could see the walk down to the boundary, for there he would locate Baraghosa, he was certain: his lights would dance as he made his slow, deliberate walk to the wall separating this last haven in Luukessia from the rest of the ruined isle.

  Yet the buildings grew sparser, and still Jasen saw no sign of Baraghosa’s lights.

  “Where is he?” he muttered.

  Alixa squeezed him. “We’ll find him.”

  Out they went, and the village became sparser. Instead of houses run up side by side, gaps were open between them. Through these valleys, Jasen spied the decline leading to the boundary, and then way out past it, though he could not pick out the wall itself against the darkness beneath the frail starlight.

  There were no lights.

  And he realized, at last, as the last of the houses gave way to nothing but night, that Daniel Carmichael had been right.

  “Baraghosa’s gone,” he whispered.

  And with him, so too had gone Terreas’s last hope.

  11

  All at once, Jasen was tired. It came as no surprise: the day had been long, far more eventful than normal, and he had run for his life twice now. Short distances, to be sure, but when adrenaline evaporated it left a cavern of exhaustion behind. Add to that the evening’s encounter with Baraghosa, and how that had ended up, it was no wonder his muscles sighed, and his legs wanted to give out.

  “We should get back,” Alixa said quietly.

  Jasen shook his head. “I need to sit.”

  “Here?”

  He nodded.

  Under usual circumstances, Alixa would likely not have obliged. The moss-covered rock by the vineyard was as close as she ever got to letting herself, or anyone in her presence, plant themselves on anything that was not a proper chair. Dirt clung, after all, and that was not civilized.

  Jasen wondered idly why she bothered. The way the assembly hall had degenerated, it was patently obvious that civility was as scarce as the seed in Terreas. Possibly the village had held some once. If it did, most of it had gone the way the rest of Luukessia’s peoples had, nothing but a memory.

  He sunk onto the grass. Alixa lowered herself beside him. She’d not let go of his arm all this time. Now, as she crouched, it was as if she remembered that she’d latched onto it. Carefully she unwound her fingers and let go.

  “Oh, Jasen,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  He followed her gaze.

  Rings of impressions encircled his wrist from her nails. In the darkness, with only dull light from Terreas leaking from behind, they had no color but dull grey. Jasen knew, though, that they would be blazing red, possibly for days.

  If he lived that long.

  Baraghosa is gone, he reminded himself. He had a full life ahead of him still.

  Though, would it feel like one?

  He sighed. He slipped his fingers past the collar of his tunic and wrapped them around his mother’s pendant. The stone was cool.

  In spite of it all, it brought the faintest sense of comfort to him.

  They sat in quiet for a long time—or Jasen sat, anyway; Alixa crouched, shifting from time to time on her knees as the ache no doubt settled in.

  After she shuffled for maybe the twentieth time, a voice from behind said, “Plant your backside down, girl. You’ve already torn a hole in your dress and muddied your knees. What will a little more hurt?”

  Jasen and Alixa turned.

  Shilara was watching them from a short distance away around the rear of a storage shed. Tucked beneath the wooden eave, in the day she might’ve been taking advantage of its shadow.

  “How long have you been out here?” Jasen asked.

  “Long enough.” Shilara stepped out. She raised her hand—and in it was her ceramic bottle. She pressed it to her lips and tipped it up. Very high up, this time, unlike this afternoon when it had been mostly full.

  This afternoon. Ancestors, how was this all part of the same day?

  Shilara meandered to them and landed heavily on her backside to Jasen’s left.

  “Care for a drink?” she offered, and extended the flask.

  He opened his mouth to say no—and then thought, why not? He’d relegated himself to dying out in the Luukessian wilds, torn apart by scourge to save the people of his village. If he ever deserved a nip of alcohol, it was this very moment. After all, if Baraghosa reappeared and Jasen made off with him, when would he get the chance otherwise?

  He took the flask.

  Alixa, to the other side of him, spluttered, “Jasen!”

  “Let him be,” Shilara said, waving a dismissive hand. “He’s had a long day.”

  He tipped it up, up—this thing really was on the verge of emptiness—and then fluid touched his tongue. Not grain alcohol, like he’d expected; this had a stronger kick to it, a fire that made him want to cough. He did cough, in fact, taking the bottle away and brandishing it at Shilara before he could hack a lungful into it.

  She chuckled. “I remember my first taste of whiskey. Reacted much the same as you did.” And she drained the last of her bottle, tilting her head back so the base of her skull was parallel with the earth. Just for good measure, she patted the bottom of the bottle. Couldn’t waste even a single drop. “Liquid gold,” Jasen’s grandfather had called it.

  She deposited the bottle by her hip. Leaning back and bracing on her hands, she looked to the stars. “So what happened? The snake show his slimy face again?”

  “He did,” Jasen confirmed with a sigh.

  “Whose family is he shattering this year?”

  “Mine.”

  Her head turned so fast Jasen thought he heard her neck crack. Sharp eyes bored into him; Jasen felt that penetrating stare even without turning to her.

  “Jasen,” she said, her voice hard. “That’s not true.”

  “It’s true,” he said softly. “Baraghosa picked me.”

  “The boy’s lying,” Shilara said to Alixa. “He must be.”

  Alixa shook her head. �
�He was chosen.” She sniffed—as close as she was willing to come to crying in present company.

  “Ancestors,” Shilara muttered. She fell back, as if in shock. Apparently unable to find words, she repeated it again, accusing the night sky in a gentle sigh of resignation: “Ancestors above.”

  Jasen murmured, “You can say that again.”

  Their trio was quiet for a time … and then Shilara twisted suddenly toward him and demanded, “But you’re still here; you haven’t gone. Did the assembly vote down the deal?”

  “My father changed his mind. Three to two, Baraghosa was rejected. Hanrey Smithson wasn’t pleased.”

  “Hanrey Smithson can choke on a clove, bitter old coot that he is. Who was the other? Not Eounice? She is still part of the assembly, is she not?”

  “Still there,” Jasen confirmed. “Griega was the second yes vote. My father would’ve been the third, but …”

  “Griega, yes, of course—but then she would, wouldn’t she; looking out for the village, although if you ask me—no, not my place.” Shilara waved away her unfinished thought. “Your father—well, I’d be very much surprised if he had agreed, and that’s putting it very politely. Shocked it’s taken this long, to be honest. The slippery eel was bound to pick the child of someone on the assembly sooner or later. Your mother ought to be thankful it never happened to any of you nippers,” she finished, leaning past Jasen to address Alixa.

  Alixa chewed her lip. “Yes, well,” she said, “it wouldn’t have mattered. The vote always goes three to two.”

  “Adem Rabinn would’ve changed his mind in an instant had you or your brothers been selected one year,” Shilara told her. “No shadow of a doubt about it.”

  “Hmm.” Alixa sounded unconvinced and lapsed into silence.

  The night air breathed softly through. Jasen had heard village elders reminisce about warmer temperatures in lower Luukessia, back in the days before the land was overrun, but the mountains bordering the village were a blessing as much as they were a curse. The valley between them, which condensed the air into a thick mist the scourge could stalk through, also kept the nights from being unbearable. What might’ve otherwise been a hot lick of air that left the body sticky with sweat was instead a cool kiss of a breeze.

  No scent of rot came. Buried by the smell of dust in Shilara’s home, then the pungent stench of those awful candles in the assembly hall, the lingering scent of it that had taken root in Jasen’s lungs seemed to have finally been expunged. Or maybe that was time. After all, it had been how long since he was out in that field last, gone stock still in confusion as one scourge fought two of its brethren to save him and Alixa? A lifetime, it felt like.

  “I don’t understand how we come so short each year,” Alixa finally said. “Terreas does not double in size each spring. How do the crop-growers fail to produce enough seed to build a surplus?”

  “Your mother tends to the fields,” said Shilara. “And you’ve several plots around your home. Did she never tell you?”

  “I don’t dare ask.” Then, after a stilted silence, another small concession: “I’m destined for weaving, not tending.”

  “Our staples come from grains. Those foods are produced with the seeds themselves. It’s difficult to build up a surplus when you’re using the crop’s new blood to feed the village. Then,” Shilara added with a heave, “there is the matter of the south fields. The mountain claims a little more of them each year.”

  “My mother doesn’t speak of it.”

  “Most people don’t talk of things that bring fear to their hearts.”

  Quiet again. It was not exactly amiable, but between Shilara and Alixa’s mutual softening toward each other—other stressors distracted from the improperness of talking to an outcast—it was at least a little more comfortable.

  “So why’re you out here?” Shilara asked. “I’d have thought your families would be keen to have you home by now.”

  “I said I’d look for Baraghosa,” Jasen admitted. “I told the assembly I’d go with him.”

  Her steely gaze was on him again. If the sharpness of it had been at all diminished by the drink, Jasen could not tell.

  “You volunteered,” she said with disbelief, “to go with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s nothing out there for you, Jasen,” Shilara said. “You could do better than to die in the wilds with a slimy conman, taking advantage of our people. Just because you want adventure—”

  “I didn’t volunteer so I might seek adventure,” Jasen answered quietly. “I volunteered because it’s the only way to ensure the village does not starve. But Baraghosa is gone, so …” The sentence ended with a shrug. Easier that than voice the truth that kept turning over and over in his mind—

  That Terreas’s people would die because of him.

  “Then you should count your lucky stars,” said Shilara. “There’s nothing out there for you. Nothing out there for most anyone. Now think no more of it.”

  A stony note had entered her voice. The conversation was over, and if it was not clear by her tone, it was apparent a moment later when she collected the ceramic flask from beside her and rose.

  “Goodnight,” she bade and turned her back on them.

  A chill breeze kicked up between them, and on it was carried a lingering note of the last of Shilara’s alcohol, breathed from the scant drops left on the lip of her flask. It was almost sweet in the night like this, none of the burn in it …

  Whiskey.

  Shilara had whiskey.

  “Wait,” Jasen commanded, up on his feet in a moment, the thought still incomplete in his mind. Why had he caught on that?

  Shilara stopped. She looked back, frowning. “Sorry?”

  “I said—” He strode to her, crossing the distance awkwardly, which was partly down to the long grass underfoot, and maybe down to the fact that the small amount of liquid he’d partaken of was unfamiliar to him, strong, able to send him just a touch wobbly. He stumbled on the last of the distance, and Shilara stuck her arm out. He grabbed it to steady himself, then eased off lest Alixa huff.

  “I said,” he repeated, and this short exertion on the last embers burning in him was enough to make it sound breathy, “to wait. I … Shilara, you said that, in your flask—it’s whiskey.”

  “Aye, it is,” she said slowly. “Or rather was. Running out of the stuff now.”

  “Jasen, what are you ...” Alixa started from behind, then trailed off into silence.

  “We don’t make a lot of whiskey,” Jasen said, “here in Terreas. And everything that we do make, it’s tightly managed. And yet you …”

  “Well, I got some,” Shilara said—but she said it a little too quickly. And although the night had muted the world’s color into a sea of grey, Jasen was sure that her cheeks would’ve bloomed with a deep red.

  “From the village?” Alixa asked.

  “Of course n—” And then she clapped a hand over her mouth, eyebrows arcing up with the same shock that lifted Jasen’s almost to his hairline.

  “You’ve been out,” he said. “You’ve passed the boundary.” There was a note in his voice of—awe? Surely not, after everything that had happened to him today?

  “Keep it bloody well down, would you?” Shilara whispered fiercely. Her eyes darted about, and though the liquor had dulled some of her senses at this late hour, the whiskey especially having eroded her good sense (“What little she had anyway,” Jasen could imagine Alixa saying huffily), he thought now that as she probed the darkness for passers-by or hidden watchers, she would be at her peak. The slightest little movement, and she would be on it.

  She was still talking: “… anyone knowing my business …”

  But Jasen barely took it in. Because there were a thousand other questions suddenly taking shape in his mind, and it was everything he could do not to blurt them in an incomprehensible mess.

  “There are people out there,” he said suddenly.

  Shilara stopped short, favored him
with a sharp glare. “There’s no one here. Not that it would bloody well matter; whole of Terreas can probably hear you, the way you’re shouting.”

  “There are people beyond the boundary,” he whispered breathily.

  Alixa made a queasy noise.

  “Where are they?” Jasen asked. A new question bubbled up after it, granting no time to stop and answer. “What’s out there? How do you leave?”

  Shilara’s muted look silenced him.

  “You leave,” she said flatly, “by crossing the boundary.”

  “But what about the scourge?”

  That question came from Alixa. It took both Jasen and Shilara by surprise. They twisted to look at her. Her eyes went wide, as if she’d only just realized she’d said anything, and echoed Shilara by clapping both hands to her mouth, stifling anything else.

  “What about them?” Shilara demanded. “Go on, girl. Speak.”

  Gently, Alixa lowered her fingers. Eyes averted, she mumbled, “How do you keep them from murdering you? They … they try to kill people.” A hesitation. “Except Jasen. He’s … immune, or something.”

  Another query hit Jasen, and he whirled, eyes all whites. “Do you have one of the scourge to fight for you? Was it the one that came and fought for us?”

  “No, I bloody well don’t,” Shilara said hotly. If she said “bloody” one more time, Jasen thought Alixa’s heart would give in. It had hardly fared very well today as it was. “And would you both stop with that? Scourge do not fight for anyone. They’re mindless beasts, dumb as rocks, each of them, but they don’t fight for anything other than a meal. Only reason the poxy things share is because their brains have to focus so hard on chewing that their vision gives out. Wouldn’t know if one or a hundred scourge were lined up and sharing the same corpse.” She tutted, a click that came low in her throat rather than from her tongue on the roof of her mouth. “Mindless things.”

  “The one that fought to save us had a mind,” Jasen said.

  She pursed her lips at that, and gave the only answer she could: a terse, “Hmph.”

  “So where is it you go?” Alixa asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” said Jasen. “There must be other people, right? If they’re brewing whiskey? Are they far? Are they—?”