Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  Flynn looked to Shea, who said, “I’ve a … cousin, in Belsus, two hours’ walk. Better off than Bagwell stock, haven’t seen him since I was small. Family kept a wealth of books on tale and myth.”

  “Assuming we could even enter unnoticed, would he let us search his library?”

  “Family’s scattered or dead, and he’s off at war,” Shea replied with a sly smile. “Mate of mine was there last week. Belsus is derelict, but his house still stands.”

  “It sounds to be our best option,” Chari agreed.

  “If you’ll have it, decide soon,” Shea replied. “I’ve not much time. Sailing off tomorrow, so a brisk step to Belsus and back before dawn. If not, rather know now. Still plenty of time to get hammered at Brinnegan’s.”

  Flynn felt the undercurrent. Shea was soon to return to war, and there was a very real chance she might die there. This was her last free day, to be herself and do as she wished, and she would sacrifice it for him. Had he done something to lure her back, said something when escorting her toward Selif that made her want to return? It hadn’t been his intent, but he didn’t trust himself just the same and wanted to decline, and give Shea her last day back.

  “Then we shouldn’t waste any time,” he agreed. Whatever his conscience whispered, it didn’t change that they could use Shea’s help. And more, he reminded himself, she might well die at war, and their secrets with her.

  “Flynn, one moment,” Chari interrupted. “What of Jean? If she is to return and find us gone—”

  “Then … that’s the price she pays,” he replied heavily. “She’s been gone for more than a day now, and she knows the score. How long are we supposed to wait?”

  Flynn hurt to say it, as Chari did to hear it. He kept asking himself if he’d been too honest with Jean or not honest enough. Should he have told her the truth about himself when he did, or back when they first met? There seemed no answer, and part of Flynn felt he was losing an invaluable resource, while a different side scorned that perception and hated saying goodbye to a friend.

  There was some further discussion among the three of them regarding next steps, and it was soon agreed that whether they pursued one of the preplanned routes or set a new one, there would be no returning to Selif or den Vier Manor. Shea’s own itinerary allowed no time for either, which Flynn found curious given the morning’s events; she’d made no mention of the hidden compartment. If she had intended to return to it before catching her boat, Flynn had spoiled those plans: he had already cleaned the compartment out. Its contents were in a sack on the dining table.

  While Zella prepared the wagon, Flynn met with Zaja and Poe by the stables, and placed the sack in Zaja’s hands. “I want the two of you to go to Selif and get whatever supplies you can. This isn’t just for the immediate journey—we’re traveling to Kin-Kin after this. Shea says we can get a boat there.”

  “You would send us there alone?” Poe asked. “Neither Zaja nor I are products of this world, and I assure you: the locals will notice. They will not be accommodating.”

  “We’ll cover up, best we can,” Zaja assured Flynn, then turned to Poe. “Just try not to look directly at anyone if you can help it. What was it you were practicing before?”

  Poe sighed in exasperation. “I have a skin condition.”

  “As for me, I have Hucklemeyer’s Disease! It’s a terrible sickness where your skin cracks into blue lesions until it spreads all over your body. When you look like I do, you’re highly contagious and everyone else should probably stay away.”

  Poe blinked. “You just made that up.”

  “I’m blue, and no one else is. Let’s have fun with that.”

  “We’re not meeting back at the manor,” Flynn continued. “There’s a juncture due west of Belsus where the road to Selif connects. When you’re ready, meet us there, just off the path. After Chari, Zella, and I are done, we’ll rendezvous there.”

  Jean’s absence from these plans was not lost on Zaja. “About—”

  “Look for her, if you can,” he said.

  “Love of money may aid us with sellers who bear little interest in inquiry,” Poe said. “Making chatter over a missing comrade who appears nothing like the locals, however, may draw undue attention.”

  Flynn nodded in agreement. “Don’t put yourselves at risk. Just … keep an eye out. Ask her to come back. She hates me, she won’t. But ask anyway. If I never see her again, I want to know she’s alright.”

  * * *

  Despite Zella’s uncertainty, when the call came to leave, she answered without question. Nothing in her heart had been resolved, and though she had suffered nightmares since coming to Keltia, she found no need to speak up. She did not, however, dare to take her eyes off Flynn. She sat across from him, as she had on the train car, never looking away as the wagon shuddered from every pothole Poe clumsily steered them through. Flynn remained stoic, barely noticing Zella at all. He was preoccupied with Shea, who in turn was transfixed by the manor vanishing in the distance.

  When the forest broke and the wagon halted, Zella was the last to disembark. While the others exchanged their temporary farewells, she went to the front with Mr. Prim-Prim, who snorted as she patted him. He was not the first creature she’d taken under her care, but he was the first of his kind she’d ever seen and might yet be the last.

  “This way, through the brush,” Shea beckoned. “Less chance a familiar face spies me. Might take me a deserter.”

  As they traded the road for the tall grass, Zella purposefully tarried, preferring the safety that distance allowed—both from Flynn and other dangers to come. She needed only remember that her life was sacred, and that it was on them to keep her safe until she chose to end it. As an observer, she felt she should be protected from involvement, which is why Flynn’s words from their recent talk haunted her so. “It must be easy to come from better worlds and judge us for what we were all made to be.” Yet her final judgment carried considerable weight.

  In time, they returned to the main road, now a safe distance from Selif. Shea hiked up first, then gave Flynn a hand, saying, “This way,” to the rest, without offering the same assistance.

  Zella planned to trail them all the way to Belsus, and paid little attention to the others and their conversations as they walked. After an hour, the path rose and wound until she found herself on a peak, overlooking a dreary bay where the wreckage of ships was slowly drowning in the tides. How many died down there? she wondered.

  Without meaning to, she found she’d rejoined her companions, who had stopped. The road beyond was littered with splintered wagon wheels and numerous articles of junk desperately salvaged from the recent raid. Dead refugees from Belsus were piled in the ditches and scattered in the western fields. Shea ground her palm into her forehead and shuddered as though fighting to bury something painful. As Flynn studied her with clinical interest, Chari wandered to the edge and noted the drowning ships. “What intolerance provoked such an attack? Or was this reprisal for some political sleight?”

  “Cavonish came for our land. We pushed back.” Shea had regained her composure. “Nearly had us. Got inland south of here before General Kivan took back Louvian Port.”

  “Why is so much blood being spilt over land?” Zella asked in disbelief. “I have seen enough of Tryna to know there is ample space to share.”

  “Bit bloody late for that, innit?” Shea snapped.

  “It wouldn’t be easy at this stage, but if both sides could come to an understanding—”

  “What chance would there be?” Chari asked. “Butchery has wracked these land. We’ve seen it! Massacre of this order does not lend to a forgiving heart.”

  “Yet it must,” Zella insisted. “If these people have needs, help meet them! They may help you out in kind. All sides could prosper.”

  Zella could only see the corner of Shea’s mouth, but it softened just a little. Even if she
did not believe in such a solution, she wanted it, and there was hope in that.

  Flynn, who had been keeping silent, posed a question. “Do they need this land?”

  “What, the Cavos?” Shea hesitated, searching for an answer. “Not sure. Were our allies ’gainst the Gorrati, could’ve taken their land if they won. Betrayed us instead. Uvench and Briss are fighting north of Cavonia, might be one side won over the other. Cavo land used to be Briss, and with the Gorrati split between Tryna and a Qalish blood feud, could have struck a deal.” She gave a smile and added, “Something I may’ve heard.”

  “Then, for many of these lands, even as one war ends, another carries on?” Chari asked.

  “That’s just our front,” Shea confirmed nonchalantly. “Qalish feuds run in every direction. Heard rumbles that New Tekevia is on a bloody rampage past them. Might get caught in that, reaches too far.”

  “Surely somewhere peace still reigns,” Zella implored. “A beacon that might serve as an example to these warring countries.”

  “Tryna was good for a time,” she replied. “Civil conflict when I was small—what did the den Viers in—but a few good years till we scrapped with the Gorra over a couple islands.”

  Zella had heard tales from Keltians before, and though all involved war, she’d had no concept of the scope before now. She worried not for the soldiers like Shea, who had been armed and trained to defend themselves, but for the victims in the middle, who would be tested with their lives. Many would cross moral lines to survive, and would no longer be the kind of people worth saving.

  Shea had drifted from the group, and was gazing at a wagon off the roadside, half-buried in the mire. In that moment, she was to Zella the face of all Trynan soldiers. “You and your enemies both have to find it in yourselves to forgive. It’s the only way this cycle ends.”

  She received no reply. Instead, Flynn spoke, his words unwelcome. “No war is won with forgiveness. Even in peaceful times, people want, and that is how they convince themselves it is their right to take. They are innocent, and innocence seeks no forgiveness.”

  And then he walked on. Shea followed, then Chari, but Zella faltered. “How easy it must be…” she murmured to herself.

  * * *

  Whatever riches the den Viers had hoarded had returned to the peasants. In Poe’s view, all they had sold were superfluous trinkets, whose value was only reflected in the supplies they helped acquire. He had no concept of whether they were being ripped off or not; only the results mattered. By the time the sun was setting over the now-distant forest to the west, they had gotten the supplies they needed, and he was ready to leave Selif behind.

  “We still have to find Jean,” Zaja reminded him.

  “Let us not and say we did.” Exploring this wreck of a city had made Poe ill at ease all day. Perhaps it was just restlessness; he was eager to return to the road and continue pursuing his destiny.

  “Come on, you’re not really going to abandon her?”

  “As she abandoned us?” Poe asked. Zaja looked up at him pleadingly, until finally he relented. “If you wish to pursue this, I shall postpone our departure.”

  The sights in Selif sickened Poe, who didn’t wish to remain longer than needed. He stayed in the wagon while Zaja—her hood drawn and her scarf concealing her face—bravely asked whoever she saw, soldiers and citizens alike. Most were too preoccupied to help, and she was ignored time and again.

  As he watched from the wagon, Poe saw a man weep over the body of a woman—his sister? lover?—as she was being carried away, likely to be burned with the other corpses piled up beyond the walls. Her remains were painted with dried blood and soot, and the way she’d been mangled suggested she’d been found crushed inside a collapsed house. The sight stirred Poe, who had killed so many but never had to face those his victims left behind.

  At least in Purgatory, he tried to remind himself, their ranks are ever changing. There are none that spend their entire lives there. Whatever comfort that gave him for his past kills, it did nothing for what he saw before him. The little girl that walked by with her mother had a stump for an arm, wrapped poorly in soiled bandages, and it was an injury she would grow old with. The few who had survived Poe’s wrath were similarly disfigured.

  “So there’s a shelter nearby, and one of the soldiers thinks Jean might be there,” Zaja told him as she returned to the wagon.

  Poe cracked the reins, and they started in the direction Zaja pointed. The ruined city echoed the tales of Earth that Flynn, Jean, and Mack had shared. From those stories, Poe anticipated them taking a wrong turn and finding themselves ambushed by lawless scavengers. With his blade he could make them suffer, and there would be a self-righteous satisfaction in knowing it was deserved.

  But it was an ambush that never came. Zaja hopped out of the wagon as it slowed to a stop, and Poe reluctantly followed her inside the shelter. There were bedrolls spread throughout with little space between them.

  “Hi, have you seen a girl come through here?” Zaja asked one of the attendants. “Tall, red hair. Bad temper, worse attitude?” She was playing shy to avoid direct eye contact. “She’s my sister. We got separated coming in from Belsus.”

  “Haven’t seen anyone like that,” the attendant replied. “Check the beds if you fancy. Might be there, having a kip.”

  Zaja thanked the attendant and stepped lightly among the beds, checking the occupants who were resting and trying not to tread over those who were still awake. Poe declined to follow, but drifted in a few steps when he overheard two soldiers talking.

  “You know that bird she’s asking ’bout?”

  “What of her?”

  “Sounds like the one from Brinnegan’s last night, don’t she?”

  “Ha! Bit, yeah.”

  Poe was reluctant to paint it as more than a coincidence. Still, he moved in, listened closer.

  “Heard she made a mess after I skipped out. Wasn’t she cozying up to the 13th?”

  “Few of ’em, anyway. Started egging on the defense force, got a fight running in no time.”

  “She did that? Well, fuck her right up the arse then.”

  It certainly sounded like Jean. Poe stepped away while the two soldiers playfully jested about the things they’d like to do with Jean’s body, and went to wait for Zaja by the wagon.

  “Nothing,” she sighed as she climbed back in.

  “I might have a lead,” Poe replied. He had considered not saying anything; without Mack to keep her in check, Jean’s value was questionable at best. But he didn’t want to hide it and regret it later, and so as Zaja gave a surprised, “Really?” Poe’s only response was to crack the reigns and seek out the pub.

  * * *

  Chari nearly lost her footing twice. They were climbing through what remained of the walls of Belsus, whose remnants still pillared three times her height, yet no longer served to protect anything. The rubble had fallen into the closest houses and sent them to ruin in turn, the devastation continuing on for several blocks before receding enough that she no longer had to worry about twisting her ankle. It was evening and, compared to Flynn and Shea, Chari couldn’t see well in the dark. Zella’s glowing eyes bounced to and fro, but if her companion had any trouble seeing, she said nothing.

  Belsus was built high and perched above the sea, and she could hear the waves faintly crashing below. It briefly reminded Chari of home—and she’d welcome a return to Cordom were it reduced to this, with the people and faith that had tormented her driven from it.

  “Shambles,” Shea muttered. “Worse than Selif.”

  “Only now I find myself wondering,” Chari said, sharing her thoughts aloud. “Was such harm wrought when the Saryu embarked on their holy wars? Were entire ways of life destroyed in compelling others to be more like them?”

  Shea glanced at Chari oddly. “Saryu?”

  “The faith I was born in
to. I’ve long abandoned it.”

  “Never heard of.”

  How could you have? Chari nearly responded, but it hadn’t escaped her that Shea was engaging in willful ignorance. She had barely looked at anyone other than Flynn, and had avoided asking every obvious question from the nature of Chari’s futuristic rifle to the almost obligatory “Why is Zaja blue?” If Flynn, whom Shea still took as one of her own, wasn’t with them, would she have run at first sight? Chari was almost certain she would have.

  As it was, she guided them, and they came through the ruined streets to an inner district that had survived the bombardment. Among the nicer homes was one whose front corner had been punched through by a cannon shell, and it was here Shea led them inside. Temporarily safe from the scavengers they’d heard moving about, Chari produced the flashlight she’d been patiently concealing, and shined it around the room. While it was not the grand home that den Vier Manor had been, this house was still illustrious, the shelves adorned with fine glass carvings and the walls hung with exquisite portraiture. Looters had already come through, though it seemed they had broken far more than they stole.

  “Think it was this way,” Shea mumbled as she guided them up the staircase. Chari knew the library would not challenge the one back at the manor, but the sizable study was respectable in its own right.

  “This certainly seems more promising,” Chari said as she plucked a book from the shelf. Unlike the stuffy tomes from before, many of these sported colorful and artistic covers. Shea glanced at the book she’d taken in hand.

  “Butts Ahoy,” she read. “Collection of Maritime Eroticism.”

  Chari could feel the dismay written all over her own face, and readily filed it back on the shelf as Shea began browsing.

  “Best get started. Long walk back, can’t be caught late.”