Death's Merchant: Common Among Gods - Book One

by Justan Henner

  The tent flap billowed inward as Trin entered. She stopped mid-stride when she saw him sitting on his cot and glared at him like she hadn’t expected to see him in the tent they shared. She turned her head to look out the way she’d come, then with a frown that seemed more grudging than displeased, she dropped the tent flap and let it close behind her.

  “What the shit, Jem?” She was out of breath, her cheeks red and splotchy.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You wanna tell me why Taehrn thinks you killed your father?”

  Jem’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Oh,” he said.

  “Oh?” she mimicked. “Is that all you’ve got to say, Jem? Taehrn just told me that you are Indaht Trask’s son, that you’ve been lying to me all along, and that’s all you’ve got to say?”

  Jem stared at her, silent. He didn’t know what to say. She was panicking, and if he didn’t stop her, she might never trust him again. She deserved better. After all that she had done to help him, after all the support she had given him, Trin deserved to know the truth.

  “It’s true,” he said.

  The statement stopped her dead. She just glared at him, her mouth ajar as if she might start yelling again. “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “Why, Jem?”

  He shook his head and then buried it in his hands, not knowing where to start. “It was just before we met,” he finally managed. “The girl I told you about… the one you were so curious about. The one you thought I left home over… One day I found her crying in the woods. Sobbing. She kept mumbling about her father’s leg. About how she couldn’t do it. About how it wasn’t fair. I didn’t know what she meant. I thought maybe she was just afraid that she wouldn’t be able to support her family while the leg healed, but she wouldn’t look me in the eye, and each time I pressed her, each time I asked what was wrong, she would start sobbing again.”

  Trin stood engrossed, staring down at him, her body motionless. He couldn’t look at her face. He looked at her neck instead. She opened her mouth to speak, and he motioned for her to wait. She did.

  “Now I know that she was just afraid,” he continued. “I think they threatened her, maybe broke her father’s leg to convince her to lie to me.”

  Trin’s face scrunched into a scowl. “To lie about what?” Trin asked.

  Jem nodded as a sign that he would get there, that she only need be patient. “It took the full day,” he said. “But finally, she told me she’d been raped… and that my father had done it. I don’t think they wanted her to do that. I think they wanted her to tell me she loved someone else so that I would be willing to leave without her. So that I would be willing to marry Deacon Lissahn’s daughter… and maybe she thought I was in danger, and that was the only thing she thought would make me leave. I just don’t know, Trin. I don’t know why Elyse said it.”

  His eyes diverted, Jem rubbed his mouth. “It was the last straw for me… Despite everything, I’d always loved my father, Trin. Despite the mines, despite Liv, despite what he did to me, I still loved him. It wasn’t his fault, you know? The pressure is what drove him to do what he did. It was because of the urging from Taehrn and his ilk… From Lissahn, and the Magistrate Godahn. They were always pressuring my father to do better… to get more from the miners and the foundries… but… but the rape was too much to take. My father had not only failed to protect me, but he had hurt her.

  “At least… Oh gods, at least I’d thought so. If Taehrn forced Elyse to lie… Gods, it’s just like what he did to me. Gods, I can’t believe I let her watch that. She watched me kill my father.”

  “Jem, tell me what happened.”

  Jem sniffed. “Gods, I’m trying!” Jem took a deep breath as he tried to settle his thoughts. “The… the feelings built for a few days. You know, the anger toward my father. I couldn’t look at him, I couldn’t look at her, and finally I knew that I’d never have peace while he lived. So yes. I killed him. I killed my father.”

  “But…” Trin breathed. “But he didn’t do it?”

  “No,” Jem said. “In Derlin, I overheard Taehrn speaking to Deacon Lissahn. They… Ever since we came here…. The reason Taehrn had me conscripted… He thought that I had come because of a deal they had made with my father. They had worked it out so that I would marry Lissahn’s daughter, that I would marry her and thereby reclaim the wealth and lands that were stripped from my father. But my father must have tried to end the marriage. I can’t figure out why he’d do that. He never even mentioned the arrangement. I had to learn it all from Taehrn. And… and I just can’t figure out why he’d do that. I mean, maybe it was because of my feelings for Elyse, and maybe the blooder had finally tried to do something right in his life, but he must have told them no. Must have told them that I would never go through with it… because they sent someone to threaten Elyse.”

  “Bullshit,” Trin said.

  “It’s true, Trin. Why do you think I’ve been in this tent most the week instead of attending to Taehrn? It’s because I’ve just now learned how far their deception went.”

  Trin frowned. “He says you’re a liar, Jem.”

  Jem nodded. “And he’s right. I am, Trin. But I don’t want to be. Not to you. I want to tell you the truth. I’ve only lied because I had to, because of the way people would react if they knew whose son I was…”

  “Then tell me, why? Why would they care so much about this marriage to the deacon’s daughter?”

  “Because apparently, I get everything my father owned upon the date of my marriage, and because they needed my father. Despite what he did at Liv, I guess he is still loved in the South. They were planning a coup, still are, and they needed him to rally Gable.”

  “What do you mean, a coup?”

  Jem shrugged. “I don’t know. They plan to kill the Grand. From the letters Taehrn has shown me… and the one I stole… she is probably already dead. They intend to assassinate her so that Taehrn can be Grand and then kill the High Cleric so that Godahn can take his place. They intend to reinstate the Writ so that the deacons and the priesthood can reclaim their stranglehold.”

  “You have this letter still?”

  Jem blinked. He had proof. He’d saved the blooding thing for this very purpose. Why had he not thought of it sooner?

  “Of course,” he said, jumping to his feet and walking to the wooden chest at the foot of his bed. He opened the footlocker, retrieved the letter from the bottom, and handed it to her. She read it slowly, her eyes darkening the longer she read.

  At last, she looked up and turned, staring over her shoulder as if her eyes could pierce the thick canvas of the tent and glare into Taehrn’s skull. “Oh, that slimy bastard, I could-”

  “He was right though, Trin.”

  Her head swung back to him, her attention fixed. Her expression seemed so hopeless, Jem wasn’t sure he could go on, but he knew he had to.

  “About what?” she asked.

  “About the rest of it. About who my father was. And about the things I told you… The story about the farrier, the story I told you, it wasn’t the whole truth. It was Taehrn who came to investigate the mines, and him who came to arrest my father. He knew my father’s face, knew exactly who Indaht was, and exactly who the farrier was. They forced me to sign the letter stating that my uncle was Deacon Trask.”

  “How could you do that?”

  “I… They threatened me.”

  “But he was an innocent man. How could you do that to him?”

  “I… I don’t know, Trin,” he said. But that was a lie. He did know. As he watched her face, he had the urge to keep going, to explain everything so that she would understand. “I was afraid. They told me they would kill them both, that I would lose my father and my uncle and… and when it came down to it, Trin, I still loved my father. And when Taehrn came to take him, I did the wrong thing.”

  She stared at him, mouth gaping. “But how could you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated. The
way she’d asked the question made him angry. He knew she was just in shock, that all this news was too much to take at once, and it wasn’t that she didn’t understand that upset him, but the fact he didn’t understand it either. He knew he should not have signed that testimony, no matter what they had threatened him with, but he had been dumb. He yelled at her.

  “Can’t you just accept that I’ve had a fucked up life, Trin? Don’t you think I know that I did the wrong thing? Don’t you think I regret my choice? The farrier and I were friends, but Trask was my father. He was my hero.”

  Trin paused, her face empty, and then she blinked as if coming back to consciousness. She looked away, and then she shook her head. “What happened to you, Jem? It couldn’t have just been the abuses at the mines. What happened to you that made you so angry? What made you so butchering stubborn?”

  She moved to her cot and sat down across from him. Leaning toward him she grabbed his face and stared into his eyes. “Are we friends?” she asked.

  Jem nodded.

  “And you care for me the same way I care for you? You want what’s best for me?”

  He nodded again.

  “Then why?”

  “Why, what?”

  “Why not tell me this?”

  “Because I… know what you are,” he said.

  Trin pulled back her head. “What am I?” she whispered through a clenched jaw.

  “You’re like me,” he said. “I’ve known it since we first met. Since I looked into your eyes, Trin. Since that moment when I spared your life. You’re afraid. You’re haunted. But you do it better. You hide it. You’re happy.” Jem closed his eyes. “I’m not happy, Trin. That’s why I need you. I need to know how you can live the way you do, how some nights you can cry over that piece of paper you’ve got, and in the morning, you can wake up with a smile. It’s like you’re living with the same guilt I am, but somehow, you’re content and I’m not. Don’t you see it, Trin? You’re the only one that can teach me. You’re the only one that can save me.”

  Trin pulled back from him and glared. For a long time she watched him, her inner workings made real in the movements of her eyes. “What happened at Liv?” she asked.

  “You know,” Jem dismissed. “I know that you’ve asked Bell. It’s pretty much the way I told him.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “Why, Trin?”

  “Because I want to know. I want to believe what you’re saying, Jem. I like you. I enjoy your company, and I want to do what I can to help you, but I need to know, Jem. I need to know why you lied to me. I need to know what you’re so desperate to hide.”

  Jem shuffled his weight. Telling her the full truth meant telling her about the Well. She wanted to know why he was so fucked up; that’s what she was after.

  “You know it all…” he said. “At least… you know most of it.”

  “Then tell me what I don’t know.”

  Jem shrugged. “One day… one day my father sent me down to the mines. He had given me a missive for the overseer, but I… I didn’t make it far. Before I got there, I saw a guard beating a man to death. One of the work crews had returned from a full day’s work with nothing to show for it. The miner claimed it wasn’t his fault, that such things could happen even in the places where the ore was rich. He wanted the guard to believe it was a fluke, but the guard killed him anyway. The guard didn’t believe the man, he said that he lied, and that really, he and his shift must have spent the day slacking. And so, they beat him to death, not knowing that I watched.”

  Jem had run the events through his mind so many times that his story felt rote. He felt as though he were reciting a practiced speech, and maybe he was, but for once it was all true.

  Jem glanced at Trin for confirmation. Her smile was grim. “Go on,” she said.

  Jem nodded. “I went to my father thinking the guards had outstepped their duty. I didn’t know, then, that the miner I’d seen hadn’t been the first to die in such a way, or that it was my father who’d given the orders. My father told me the miners weren’t men, but criminals who had no rights. He believed in the Legion, and I believed in him, but still, I knew it wasn’t right.

  “So, I… I started spending more time down at the mines. I started asking questions, and I learned how the miners truly lived. They were worse than prisoners. Many slept out in the dirt, in tents so bad they looked to have spent a month in the rot. If they didn’t produce, they didn’t eat, but the mines were on their last leg so their rations were tight, and when they didn’t eat they produced less.

  “Again, I confronted my father, and again, he didn’t listen, so then I went to my uncle, and at first, he listened. And that’s when I learned of the Well.”

  “The Well?” Trin asked.

  Jem nodded. “There is an old mineshaft in the mines, one that predates my father’s stewardship. It used to be the main shaft, right up until the floor gave out beneath it. Now it’s a large pit the miners used to call the Well that leads into the cavern below. It’s a straight drop, at least sixty feet down, and it’s where my father decided to hide his victims.”

  Trin leaned across and squeezed Jem’s leg. “You saw it?”

  “Yes. One of the miners showed my uncle and me. He thought we could help them.”

  “Did you?”

  “I tried.” Jem stopped and cleared his throat. It was beginning to feel rough. “In the worst of it, I brought them blankets, I brought them food, but it wasn’t until I saw the Well, and the bodies inside, that I really understood how far my father had gone. I kept trying to confront him, but… it was different after that. Every time I brought it up, he’d mention the Writ, and the Legion. He’d tell me how he was doing only as the gods commanded, as doctrine required of him. I think he really believed it.

  “Eventually, he stopped arguing. Instead, he just ignored me. He was tired of arguing, I think, but I like to hope that my words were reaching him, that he started ignoring me because only in ignoring me could he continue to live with the truth of what he’d done. And when my father wouldn’t listen, I tried again with my uncle, but the farrier rebuked me. He said my father knew best, but I could see the worry in the tight lines of his face. He didn’t believe the words he was saying, but I think he knew already how far things had gone and what would happen to the whole regiment if anyone found out.”

  “Then… he didn’t send the letter warning the priesthood?”

  “No,” Jem said. “No, not exactly. He did send a letter, but he sent it Magistrate Godahn, knowing that Godahn would find a way to explain away my father’s abuses. Apparently, there had already been concern that my father was a failure. I guess there was talk that he should never have been given a deaconship, and it was reflecting poorly on Godahn and his allies… so they orchestrated a kind of… fake inspection. It was a delegation of priests from several different cults, most of them Godahn’s political rivals and the undecided. You see, they were not sent to investigate my father’s crimes, they were sent in an attempt to prove my father’s competency, so that Godahn would look better.

  “They bought untreated ore from anywhere that would not leave a trace. From Atherahn and Denerahn mostly, and they carted it into the mines. They stocked our stores with more iron than the mines would produce in a year. They cleaned the camps, built new lodging to deal with the overcrowding, fed them, clothed them, did everything they could to make it seem like everything was perfect. Even the beatings stopped…”

  “So, what happened?”

  “The delegation came from Trel. Friends, enemies, everyone who had ever had reason to doubt my father, and every person who’d ever supported him, it felt as if they were all there. Taehrn had come as a representative of the Magistrate, and as a representative of the Legion’s interests. They tried to pass it off as a surprise inspection, despite the fact my father had known of it for months. My uncle, the garrison, my father, all of them went along with the ruse. Even the miners were silent, likely thinking that all the ch
anges that had come in recent months were permanent. But I was not content. And neither were all of the delegates.

  “The Cleric, having heard the rumors of abuse, sent his own man… And the man was somewhat strange. He kept to himself, he stayed away from the other delegates and the parties they threw. Gods, I do not even know if he met my father… Instead, he spent his time at the mines, asking questions about how the prisoners lived, and how the work suited them. I… showed him the Well, and he took the story to the Cleric. No one else knew, not until after the charges had been formally drawn up. The delegates left, and for a time, my father and the others believed that their scam had worked.

  “In the aftermath of the inspector’s visit, before Taehrn returned as the Executioner rather than as a friend, things returned to their previous state. The beatings resumed, but one day, on a bad day when an entire day’s work produced a single piece of ore, my father came down to the mines himself to arbitrate judgment. I confronted him then… In front of everyone. And he… decided to make an example of me.”

  Trin’s hand tensed on his knee. “What did he do, Jem?”

  “You won’t believe me.”

  “Tell me, Jem.”

  Jem shook his head. “It was my fault, Trin. I didn’t understand what such condemnations could do, that such defiance could spark the miners to revolt. He had to stop that.” Jem’s voice cracked. “I understand that, Trin. He had to teach them to behave. He had to teach me to behave.”

  “That’s horsesh-”

  “I know,” Jem interrupted. “I know it is, Trin. But that’s what he said. That’s what he believed. Of course, my father had thought to quell a riot with his actions…” Jem gestured to the lash scars on his legs. “But instead, he incited one. By the time I had… returned, the miners were dead. They didn’t have a hope. The garrison was small, but they were well-fed, well-armed, and well-armored. The guards that survived, fled. My father felt so guilty he holed himself up in the garrison, just him and my uncle. He convinced everyone else to leave, that he would take the blame himself, that they were innocent.”