Snowtear

by S. B. Davidson

  “Mon Ullimar, please,” Riken said, “the girls?”

  Ullimar put his face in his hands, and started to cry in pitiable gasps.

  “He mentioned it almost in passing,” the man said. “At first, I thought he was jesting. It seemed so deplorable. I let it go. Weeks passed before the matter was brought up again. By this time, I was truly feeling the weight of losing my Black Earth mines. I’d thought I could get by without them, but I was slowly hemorrhaging coin without their trusty bounty. In secret, I’d sold a few of my holdings to Western mineral merchants. When that hadn’t helped, I’d started taking loans from the palace, with nary a mind as to how I’d repay them. Marr never knew how close we’d come to ruin. I hadn’t the heart to tell her, though, if I had, I’m not sure the spending would’ve ceased. That woman loved to splurge like no one I’ve ever encountered. I felt a louse and a failure. How could I have smeared my father’s great legacy so? I had to do something, anything. When again Sefen casually made his ploy, it fettered in my brain for weeks.”

  A tickle of thought that had begun in the back of Riken’s mind was gradually blooming into a pounding drum. Like anyone, he knew little of the nomadic tribes wandering the plains of Black Earth, only rumors and fourth-hand stories told in taverns. Though just beyond the reach of the Pristinus mountain range, Black Earth might as well have been on the underside of the world along with Drem Island for all anyone truly knew of it. The region was a desolate wasteland, where its only inhabitants had lived for countless cents away from the prying eyes of civilized society.

  As Riken contemplated how the missing girls could fit into Ullimar’s tale, though, one glaring rumor surfaced, bearing repugnant fruit.

  “You execrable monster,” Riken said, and Ullimar raised his head, stifled his crying, and stared culpably at him.

  Uther shuffled his feet and turned to Riken, regarding him with extreme curiosity.

  “My sentiments precisely, Mon Snowtear,” Ullimar said.

  “For gems and gold,” Riken said, shaking his head, his heat rising.

  “Aye, in the end, for nothing more than rock and accumulated grit.”

  “How could you?”

  Ullimar’s head hung so long, Riken thought it might fall from his body. Right now, he liked the idea immensely. Maybe he could help it along.

  “I don’t…know,” the man said, looking as if being in his own skin was tantamount to living in a den of ravenous snakes. He shook and twitched repulsively, making Riken’s flesh crawl. “How can such evil overtake one so lethargically that you don’t even realize it until it’s too late?”

  “Horseshit,” Riken spat.

  “Nay, I wish it were that simple, Mon Snowtear.”

  “But it is. How long has this been going on? At least two cents by my count. Unless old Sefen has been spiking your morning wine for the last two hundred cycles, you knew exactly what the fuck you were doing.”

  “What you say is true,” Ullimar said, “but my own hands were never sullied by such business. Sefen took care of it all. That was part of the deal, that I’d never have any further knowledge of the goings-on.”

  “Out of sight and all,” Riken said disdainfully.

  Ullimar nodded. “For good or ill, that distance allowed my mind separation from the horrible things going on under my nose.”

  “Under your nose implies unawareness.”

  “Poor choice of words, then. Let’s say the things instigated on my behalf.”

  “Brilliant,” Riken said.

  “You couldn’t possibly think less of me than I do myself, Mon Snowtear.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can do when I set my mind to something.”

  “Aye, well…that was the way of it. Sefen handled my interests, and soon the mines were once again lining my pockets with their caches. I kept out of it…for the most part. On occasion, when my conscious got the better of me, I did instruct Sefen to hire a few of the mothers on as servants. Sefen insisted it was foolhardy, that eventually they’d talk to one another and find us out. I didn’t care. It…soothed my conscience, I suppose. I told Sefen to handle it, and he always did.”

  “How commendable,” Riken said. “There should be some kind of award for nobility such as that. And Sefen, what was his reward in all this?”

  “He was considerably reimbursed for his troubles.”

  “His troubles,” Riken scoffed. “So, that little rent room he has...?”

  “A guise, aye.”

  “Smart man, I’ll give him that. Uther, why don’t you go find our good friend Sefen. He really should join in on our lovely conversation.”

  For a moment, Riken didn’t think Uther planned on budging. The man still held Ullimar in a heated glare, ready for any opening the man would afford him. Finally, his body relaxed, and he backed away from his position with an angry snort directed at Ullimar.

  “And Sage,” Riken said, hearing Uther stomping down the hallway, “you think she’s in route with these girls?”

  “I can only assume that’s what Beatrix did with her,” Ullimar said. “That’s what Sefen thinks.”

  “Beatrix planned no such thing. She had Sage in a little building by the docks with her two sons. She only wanted to hurt you, not Sage.”

  “What?”

  “A couple nights ago, just before my attack, a group of men found them and took her.”

  Riken hadn’t flinched, but Ullimar suddenly looked as if a swinging log had just impaled his stomach. His eyes widened so that the whites eclipsed most his blue, and he opened and closed his mouth a few times as if parched.

  “You lie,” he almost snarled, though the weakness of it doused any assurance he might’ve held.

  “To what end?”

  “By the Fire, why?”

  “You tell me,” Riken said.

  “How would I know such a thing? Who would do this?”

  “Aye, it’s not as if you’ve made any enemies with your forthright business practices. Who’d want to do you harm?”

  “But no one knows,” the man said.

  “Beatrix did. If she could figure it out, I assume a few others could as well. And, of course, there’s always old rod-up-the-ass.”

  “Sefen? He’s been a loyal partner for cycles. That’s preposterous.”

  “Is it? What did he stand to lose if your little scheme was found out?”

  “But…”

  “Have you met Sefen? I doubt there’s much he wouldn’t do to preserve his little nest egg. Getting rid of Sage and telling you it was Beatrix’s doing are the least of what that man’s capable of.”

  “He would never,” Ullimar said, though with little conviction.

  “Not so sure now, huh?”

  “My little girl,” Ullimar said, and wholly broke down. His drenched body convulsed as if his heart had just ruptured in two. His hands went to his robes, tearing at them, revealing his pale, hairy chest. Guttural wails assailed the room, making Riken feel like cowering in a corner until they passed. “My sweet baby, what have I done to you? How could I have been so blind? I didn’t know. I couldn’t. It was just…”

  “Don’t you dare say business,” Riken said, a trace of courage returning. “You know what they do with them. You must.”

  Ullimar shook his head like a stubborn child.

  “The Black Earth tribe,” Riken said. “They don’t invite those girls for wine and pastries. They don’t treat them to late afternoon plays. The girls you’ve been supplying them with for cycles? How many, do you think? Four or five every ten or so cycles? So what, roughly a hundred in two cents? They sacrifice them. Don’t shake your fucking head. You knew. You always knew. You just didn’t care to think on it. Doesn’t make for pleasant conversation at your weekly balls with your affluent friends, but you had to know. What did you think they were using them for?”

  “I didn’t…”

  “Know how they sacrifice them?”

  “Hold your lying tongue,” Ullimar cried.

  Riken g
round his teeth until he was sure he’d open his mouth and find them in bits. He wanted to leap at the man, this waste of space and breath, bury his fingers into Ullimar’s neck, and dig until he reached meat. How could any mortal be so callous with the lives of innocents? Riken had seen debauchery. In slums like Sorrow, it was so commonplace it was sickening. But this? This was a wholly new kind of depravity. He’d thought crime to such auspicious people as Ullimar and his kin was nothing greater than cheating at a hand of cards at a weekly game among friends. He would never have imagined he’d come so close to pure iniquity this far east of the dividing line. Maybe he’d misjudged the inhabitants of Sorrow and the other slums. Vagrants, they might have been, but even they couldn’t have conjured something this horrendous.

  “And for gems,” Riken said. “For more coin to fill your already overflowing pockets. For that, you stole countless innocent, young girls from their loved ones. You tore apart what little dreams they had in their worlds. You lost your livelihood, your only daughter, and now your wife. You make me want to reach into my own head and rip out my eyeballs and eardrums so I don’t have to see or hear another bit of your morose sniveling self-pity.”

  Ullimar’s eyes drifted from Riken to his departed wife hanging from the rafters. The saddest smile Riken had ever glimpsed graced the man’s face as he gazed upon the once beautiful creature. A single tear trickled down his face, and he said something under his breath too low for Riken to hear.

  The tenderness of the moment was utterly lost on Riken.

  “You know what, Ullimar?” he said. “Do all who reside on this land an enormous kindness, and light up your fucking world already.”

  His eyes never leaving his wife’s corpse, Gregor Ullimar said, “Gladly.”

  Then he did.

  “By the Wind, what happened to you now?”

  Riken rolled his eyes at Jillian, slipped out of Uther’s supporting grip, and crossed the room to his bed. With a certain flair for the dramatic, he collapsed upon it with a long cleansing sigh. Content to stare idly at the ceiling, he made Jillian wait a few minutes while he allowed the day’s events to wash over him.

  “Where have you two been?” Jillian asked in a tone that told Riken she didn’t much care to be kept in the dark any longer.

  “A roast,” he said, lifting his legs onto the bed and crossing them.

  “Ullimar’s,” Uther said.

  “The Ullimars? Why?” Jillian asked. “What did you find out at the docks?”

  Riken had almost forgotten about their business at the docks. It seemed like something he’d done a week ago. Without any help from Uther, who busied himself cleaning his recently blackened boots with a cloth from the tub, Riken told Jillian the tale of their day in its entirety, right up to the part where Uther had rushed into the inferno that had been her ex-employer’s bedroom and dragged Riken’s suffocated body from the amassed cloud of flame-kissed, black smoke. Out of kindness to Jillian’s sensibilities, or possibly just a cravenly means of ridding the ugly scene from his mind, he slanted the exact tactics of Marr Ullimar’s gruesome suicide. He told her the woman had taken a few drops of poison with her very last glass of wine.

  “And, of course,” Riken said, “our good friend Sefen was fortuitously long gone.”

  “That’s horrible,” Jillian said when he’d finished.

  “Aye, looks like you’ll have to find a new job,” Riken said. “That’s always a hassle.”

  She replied with a cool stare that damn near cut him, and Riken decided against making light of the situation again in her company. Perched on the edge of his bed, the woman was quiet for a long, uncomfortable time. He’d known she’d take the news of Sage’s departure hard, but was inadequately suited to consolation, so he left her to her thoughts. When she began to cry, almost soundlessly, her hands hiding her face, he rose and put his arm around her shoulder. She let her head rest on his arm, her hair spilling onto his still irritated, slightly pink skin.

  “Then she’s truly gone,” Jillian said, wiping at her eyes with resigned composure.

  “I told you,” Riken said, “I say when my jobs are over.”

  As she turned to face him, he felt her warm body brush against him, her hair, smelling sweetly of citrus, grazed his cheek. Consciously or not, he liked the feeling. Her eyes questioned him. He looked to Uther.

  “We’ll need a crew,” he said.

  “Aye,” Uther said, not bothering to look up from his meticulous cleaning work.

  “Five, maybe six?”

  Uther nodded.

  “For what?” Jillian asked.

  “Because only two of us going up against the whole Black Earth tribe would be just plain stupid,” Riken said.

  Book Two

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wherever she was, it was dark as the murky insides of a sealed wine barrel, but Sage Ullimar hadn’t lost her wits yet. She was scared, to be sure. Only a simpleton wouldn’t comprehend the danger of her predicament, but, as in the past, if she could manage to keep her wits about her, she might yet make it out of this intact.

  Somewhere in the blackness, one of the other girls whimpered. Though Sage had only been with them a few days, already she could recognize each of the other five by their individual sounds of sorrow. The one whimpering presently, she’d named Dove for her propensity to coo like the bird when she sobbed. The rest – Fawn, Onion, Brook, and Mouse – were silent at the moment, especially Mouse, hence the name.

  Sage deduced they were in a large crate of some sort. From what she’d gathered by feeling around blindly on their first day within its thick, moldy walls, their prison measured about eight by eight. Provided no blankets or bedding by their, as yet, unidentified captors, the six girls stole what sleep they could on the hard, splintery floor, often huddling together for warmth and a slice of fretful comfort. How many days they’d been in here, she couldn’t truly know, but it had to have been at least four. Where exactly they were or where they might be going? Well, not knowing might just be the best thing possible.

  It hadn’t taken Sage long to figure out the identities of her first captors. In that dank, hay-filled shed with those two gargantuan brutes, she’d listened quietly to their muffled conversation for the first few hours, noting the connotations of their speech and the fragile way they handled her. After the immediate terror of waking up bound and away from her own home had passed, she’d quickly realized she was in no real danger. Those two had fed her regularly, brought her extra blankets when she got up the nerve to ask, and even fluffed her down pillow for her when they thought she was sleeping. Not the cleverest two to have ever wrestled their way into extra, extra large tunics, they’d let Min Glaison’s name slip a number of times.

  For the life of her, Sage couldn’t figure out why Beatrix would want to do her harm. The old lady had always been nice to her, never overly friendly like some of the house staff or motherly like Jillian, but kind nonetheless. Still, as kidnappings went, that one had surely been on the top tier, a pleasant afternoon picnic in a meadow compared to the men who’d snatched her from the shack.

  “Mumma,” Brook sobbed, her head in Sage’s lap. It was the only thing the poor child ever said.

  Sage stroked little girl’s hair, felt her quiver beneath her light touch and continue to sobbed like a lazy stream.

  “Hush, little one,” she said. “We’ll be fine, you’ll see. Someone will come. Just rest.”

  How easy the lie came.

  “Chet Rigenald.”

  “Fuck him.”

  “Ratt Goldensun.”

  “Bugger him,” Riken said.

  “Owe them coin?” Uther asked with an amused frown.

  Riken slid his legs off the bed and hopped up, shaking the residual soreness from his limbs, happy to find most of it past the point of more than trifling annoyance.

  Uther’s full weight rested in a brave chair propped against the wall close to the door. Agitated, he crossed one leg over the other, fidgeted, sighed. He looked tire
d. They’d been going over names for almost half an hour.

  “What about Frederick Yale?” Riken asked.

  Uther shook his head. “You know he won’t. Not since you stiffed him on that escort job.”

  “He got drunk and fell asleep at the reigns. Damn near ran that wagon off a cliff with that priest and his daughter in it. Should’ve made him pay me.”

  “Still, he’s out, for sure.”

  “Bugger him too, then. Who else?”

  “Payton Quint? Great tracker.”

  “Will he?”

  “Owe him any coin?” Uther asked.

  “Not to my recollection,” Riken said with a haughty sneer.

  “Then, probably.”

  “Well, that makes one. We need at least five.”

  “Easier when you don’t piss off half the good fighters in the city,” Uther said under his breath.

  “Hmm?”

  “Nothing.

  “What about Abby?”

  The stressed wood cringed as Uther brought his chair down and narrowed his eyes at Riken. “Nay,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Why?” Riken asked.

  “Why would you even want her?”

  “Why not?”

  “Nay, Riken.”

  “Why, Uther?”

  “Don’t play coy with me,” Uther said, his voice steeped in abrupt anger that Riken hadn’t seen coming, but probably should have. “You know she won’t, and I think that’s best.”

  “What did I tell you about thinking?”

  “Nay, Riken, and that’s it. You aren’t doing that to her?”

  “Doing what?” Riken asked. “Offering her a good job with even better coin?”