She pressed her lips tighter together and trudged on, out of the small town, not even bothering to learn its name and history, onto the crumbling road leading south. A small group of women with their children drove their wagons on the road, the oxen plodding along with mules, and it felt natural to fall into pace next to the chatter of mothers, the shrieks and laughter of the children. The matriarch leading the group was wary of Nora at first, but accepted her company on account of her being a young maiden—ha!—traveling alone, obviously down on her luck, what with the hideous face and all. Nora touched the old scars with a scowl, but didn’t bother pulling up her hood.
At dusk, the group made camp just off the road, and Nora built her own small fire under the branches of the trees alongside them. Washing lines were hung up, swaddling cloths laundered, meals cooked. The mothers’ efficiency was impressive. Nora munched on a mealy apple and threw the core behind her into the dark.
A bush rustled, and she saw a thin, waif-like face poke out of the leafless branches.
“Hey,” she said. “I see you.”
“Shhh.” The child held a finger to its lips. Nora found it hard to tell whether it was a girl or a boy under all the grime and the snotty nose. “I’m hiding.”
“You’re not doing it very well, then, are you?”
The child frowned.
“You’re not hiding at all,” it said. “And you should, with your face scarred like that. Nobody’s gonna marry you now.”
Nora’s mouth twitched. Hello, old ghost, still hanging in there, aren’t you? “Your mother say that?”
“Grandmama.” The child ducked back into the bushes as footsteps approached.
The matriarch drew herself up before Nora, hands on her formidable hips.
“You, girl.” A ladle pointed at Nora. “Have you seen our Kenneth?”
Ah, a boy child then.
Nora shook her head.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t seen anybody.” The matriarch tutted and stalked off, yelling for Kenneth. Nora waited until she had reached the rear of the camp.
“Are you Kenneth?” she asked the boy hidden in the bush.
“What if I am?” The boy sniffed. “You lied.”
“Yep. What did you do?”
“I ate the sausages I wasn’t supposed to.” Kenneth peeked out warily. “You ever done stuff you’re not supposed to?”
Nora looked down at her hands. Then up at the sky. Too much stuff. She sighed.
“Yeah.”
“Grandmama gets really angry when I do.” Kenneth crawled partway out of his bush. “She scares me a bit then.”
“Does she beat you?”
“Yeah.” The boy crouched on his haunches, drawing a pattern in the dirt with his fingers.
Nora leaned in closer. “Doesn’t stop you, though, does it?”
“No,” he admitted, his grin flashing his tooth gap.
“Good.” She held out her last apple. “Are you hungry? Want an apple?”
He eyed it greedily, but he wasn’t stupid. “What do you want for it?”
Nora chuckled and turned the apple, showing off its shiny red side. “Information.”
“What do you want to know?” Kenneth smacked his chapped lips.
“What’s up with Moorfleet?”
He shrugged.
“Grandmama says there are bad men in Moorfleet. It’s a godsforsaken hellhole, she says. So we’re going to the Shrine of Hin. The prophetess will protect us there, she says.” He caught Nora’s gaze. “They killed my mother, I think. The bad men.”
“You think?”
“I saw them kill my dad. Punched him to the ground, then stabbed him a few times with a knife. But my mother—they dragged her off while I was hiding. She had told me…I had to hide. So I didn’t see—” He frowned. “I had to stay in hiding, right?”
Nora shuddered. “Yes.”
“You think they killed her?”
Nora hesitated.
“She’s gone, Kenneth. She’s not coming back.”
He nodded and Nora handed him the apple. It seemed a poor exchange, but it was the best she had to offer. They sat by each other in silence while he devoured the apple, even the core. When he had finished, he clasped his arms around his knees and rocked on his heels a while. Nora settled back down into her furs, trying to find a comfortable spot, trying to ignore his incessant humming. It was a lullaby she barely remembered Mother Sara singing to Owen and her so long ago. Different lifetime.
“What’s your name?” Kenneth asked suddenly.
“Nora Smith.”
“Was your husband a smith?”
“My father.”
“Oh. Did your face get burned after they killed him?”
Astute, for a kid.
“After. But before my brother—”
My brother died—an ice-cold sting ripped into her heart. She couldn’t even say it. He hadn’t died. He was still out there somewhere. She simply had to follow the trail of dusty magic lights.
“They killed him, too, huh?”
“Given enough time, Kenneth, everyone is killed.” She closed her tired eyes again. Go ahead, scare the kid off with your gloom and doom, she thought to herself. You’re doing a fantastic job for a crazy person.
“Can I sleep here?” Kenneth asked.
Nora opened her eyes, surprised, and looked down at him curling up by her side.
“Sure, but I’ll have to tell your grandmother, else she’ll worry.”
He considered this for a moment, then nodded, not bothering to stifle his yawn, and quickly fell asleep. Nora sat next to him for a while, then arranged her furs so they would drape over his small, vulnerable body exposed to the cold winter night. When his grandmother passed by again, Nora waved her over and pointed him out.
“He’s not bothering you?” the matriarch huffed, but her eyes went soft as she looked at the boy.
“He’s fine where he is.”
“You remind him of his mother, you know. More than me.” The older woman’s shoulders sagged with grief.
Nora wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Not your fault, is it?” the woman said sharply. At the sound of her voice, the boy stirred and buried his face deeper into the fur. “Not your fault the world is such a mess.”
“No,” Nora said softly. “No, it isn’t.”
She pulled out her knife, her only true possession left besides the ragged clothes she wore, and tipped it slightly, so she could look at the thin edge of the blade. If she pricked her finger, she knew she’d see a tiny light in the drop of blood. But she didn’t mean to track Owen tonight. She stared at the serpentine patterns of the iron rods her father had beaten together when forging the steel blade, hard and brittle, flexible and soft. Both kinds of iron had to be folded into one. Scratches marred the twisting patterns, little nicks, like scars, marks of blows the knife had given and taken. So many. The hilt was polished smooth where she palmed it; the antler stained darker with her ingrained sweat.
“You know how to use that thing?” The older woman startled Nora out of her dark thoughts.
“I do.”
The woman looked down at the knife, her face a mask of disgust. They both knew she hadn’t been asking whether Nora could prepare food with it. Nora resisted the urge to twirl the knife, to show off. The older woman snapped her open mouth shut again, pressing her lips tighter together.
“Good,” was all she said, and left.
Chapter 6
The road to the Shrine of Hin was a broad causeway, wide enough for two wagons to pass each other. The Holy Road snaked its way lazily through the old country, the apple orchards of ancient Moran, rotten fruit still hanging on the bare trees. It was paved, even, every flagstone fitted to the next with skill. Yet through the cracks, the weeds were showing. The road ran ever on, for miles across the flat land; you could see tomorrow’s journey crawling closer with every dragging step. Nora could see the crossroads where the Holy Road met the coast
al road that ran past the Ridge. And the burned ruins of the small cluster of inns and merchant stores that had made their home there, like ticks hanging on fat veins.
Kenneth jumped at Nora from behind an apple tree. “Were you scared?”
“No,” she said for the umpteenth time. They had been playing this game for days now. Days.
“Did you see me coming?”
“Yes.”
He grumbled and pitched himself headfirst into the weeds alongside their path, nearly as tall as he was. She could make out his crop of dark locks as he tried to sneak past her, cross to the other side, and try again. She waited. The Holy Road was beset on all sides by bogland, wet mudflats that stretched brown and uninviting to each side now, partly covered in a white snow and ice crust, partly in slush. Though in summer, green meadows covered the brown, blanketing the land with radiant flowers.
It wouldn’t be long now, only a few days, and they’d reach the first of the gift trees Nora hated so much. Maybe already tomorrow their swelling traveling company would reach the crossroads, though at their pace, it seemed unlikely. So many women and children on the road this year, in the middle of winter. Too many. However, it had been a restful journey so far. No thieves or bandits. Well, they were all sleeping warm and comfortable in the stolen houses and raided villages, she supposed. Nora unclenched her teeth, though her stomach remained tight, and her hand darted forth to snatch a gleaming speck of magic. The cold air seemed ripe with them the closer they got to the shrine, like iridescent snowflakes hanging in lazy suspension among the falling flakes. She squeezed the captured speck in her fist, digging her fingernails into the flesh of her palm, and felt the familiar ache bloom behind her forehead. Owen. He was much closer. So, she seemed to be gaining on Bashan, on the Blade. Well, good.
Kenneth burst forth from a patch of nettles.
“Were you scared?”
She sighed.
“No. Aren’t you stung?”
“Stung?”
“Those are nettles.”
He turned and regarded the weeds critically, as though seeing them for the first time.
“Oh.” His scrawny forearms were so covered in grime and scratches it was hard to tell if he had been nettle-burned. “Nah.”
But he stayed at her side, jumping from one flagstone to the next, first on his right leg, then on his left. Careful not to touch the gutter between the stones, or cracks splitting them in two. Nora knew that game. The endless game on the road. The good thing about the boy was he didn’t talk all the time. They walked ahead of the train of women and other children, the cloud of noise accompanying them a little fainter up front. Though sometimes Kenneth’s grandmother would holler for him. That woman had lung power, it was unbelievable.
After a while Kenneth stopped hopping and trotted next to her.
“It’s Solstice tomorrow,” he announced.
“Is that so?”
With a flash of heat, Nora remembered last year’s Solstice. Shade and Calla singing the Hymn of Light. Diaz and her on the balcony. Leaning in for what might have been a kiss. Ah. Painful. She winced.
“Grandmama says being alive is gift enough. And I shouldn’t be greedy and ask for more.”
Nora grunted.
“But if I could wish for a present, know what I would wish for?” The hopping recommenced.
“An invisibility cloak?”
Kenneth’s eyes went wide. “Do they really exist?”
Whoops, maybe she should focus more on what the boy was saying, not give him ideas. Nora shrugged and stared ahead. Over a year ago she would have sworn the Living Blade didn’t exist. Now look at her catching magic blobs in its wake.
“Who knows?” she said.
Kenneth was enthused about invisibility cloaks for a while, prattling on without needing much encouragement from her except an occasional nod or grunt. Then he remembered what he had wanted to say.
“But,” he interrupted his previous sentence about playing hide and seek. “You know what I would wish for if I could have a present tomorrow?”
His parents back? His mother safe with him? His home? His toys, his life? Nora looked at his grubby little face and had no clue. A shard of security and fucking peace for the world? “What would you wish for?”
“I’d wish for you to teach me how to use that knife of yours.”
His earnest face—she had to turn away from it.
“You don’t have your own knife?” she asked, stalling.
“I do, but it’s a dining knife. It’s good enough for poking into meat strips and peeling apples, but I don’t even have a hunting knife now. I used to.” He looked up at her. “So, will you teach me?”
Nora walked on a few steps. Then stopped, pulled out her knife, and crouched down to talk to Kenneth face-to-face.
“My father made this knife for me as a dowry gift. You know what a dowry is? Good. I was meant to marry and leave home, but he wanted me to take a piece of home with me too, wherever I went. Three knives he made, a set, one knife for anything and everything, this one for meat, a third for bread. I lost the others, but this one has stayed with me, just as he intended. It’s mine, and I have no intention of letting you use it. Because I have used it, but not as my father would have liked.
“I’ve killed men with this knife, Kenneth. Let’s say in self-defense, shall we? Butchered bad men, some good men, too, perhaps. Saved my life so far. But I couldn’t save my father, couldn’t save my brother. Couldn’t save fuck all. But it doesn’t matter, does it? You know why? People think when you pull out a blade you’re answering a simple question. Yes or no. Mostly no. Life or death. Mostly death. Honor or no honor? Who gives a damn? The truth is, there are no simple answers in the world, boy. The two sides of a blade are an illusory answer. There are too many of them in reality. Each folded into the other. But you can make questions seem simple because you’re a kid, and you think this is a game you’re playing, and that somehow if you just grind through, acquire the right skill set, endure to the end, you’ll win. That’s fine. We all start out thinking that. But no one ever wins at life. Not me, and not you. Got it?”
He nodded shortly, staring at the knife with a need in his moist eyes, lower lip quivering.
“I only wanted—”
Nora rose and sheathed her knife.
“You’re a fucking six-year-old, Kenneth. I don’t want to live in a world where I have to teach six-year-olds how to kill people. Do you?”
As he shook his head silently, the tears ran down his cheeks, cutting clean chasms through the dirt. Her heart—it should be hardened to tears by now.
“Then remember that tomorrow,” Nora said. “And the next day, and forever, and bloody well do something about it. Now scram.”
He ran toward the women behind them, his little legs pumping like he had a demon chasing him. Nora turned back to scan the horizon before her, see where the twisting road would lead her. Maybe she should look for a dog to kick next. Or better still, a puppy.
She felt sick. Sick and angry. Because she was right. Because on the horizon, streaming into the late afternoon sky, a dark, dense cloud rose above where the shrine should be, a stain spreading into the fucked-up world.
Smoke.
Again.
Like a message from the gods.
The dull ache behind her brow intensified as she picked up her feet and started to jog. Leaving the women and children behind.
* * *
At the crossroads, before the burned-out shell of an inn whose remaining iron sign named it Sanctuary, someone had hung three cages, three gibbets, crude and rashly fashioned from fresh-cut timber. The tiny market square at the center of the forking roads reeked of death under the smoke. A putrid stench filled the air, polluting it, spilled blood and gore. Nora pulled up her scarf over her nose and tried breathing through her mouth. Her knife was unsheathed, waiting in her hand as her eyes scanned the shadows for movement, trying to unsee the charred corpses and broken bodies that littered the street, t
he grown-up ones…and the smaller ones. Especially the smaller ones. The cold had kept them from bloating, hands and forearms held over their heads for protection, covered in gaping cuts. Brains dashed out against the cobblestones, the gray spilling forth between golden angel locks. Nora’s stomach heaved. She crouched beside a dead woman whose skirts were draped across her face, leaving her lower body and legs blue and purple, and naked. She flapped the stiff, hoarfrosted fabric down, but then noticed the ripped bodice, the woman’s ample breasts hanging out, teeth marks on the pale skin, gravity’s grip not loosening in death. And the face…
Shit.
The rush of beating wings made her flinch and whip around, knife ready. A raven. Of course. Always the ravens, fucking carrion birds. One was perched on top of a gibbet that creaked in the harsh wind. Its inhabitant bare and broken, hands still tied behind his back, bloody feet hanging down. The raven eyed Nora, cawed indignantly, then picked at a patch of flayed skin. She shuddered and turned away.
Just beyond the marketplace, she could see the first of the gift trees lining the road to the shrine, necklaces and silver trinkets chiming in the wind. The prayer ribbons fluttering freely, untouched by the ruin beneath. Reluctantly, Nora let her feet lead her in that direction. Toward the shrine. A dull ache throbbed in time with her heartbeat. The magic motes coalesced before her weary steps into a thin line of cold blue light, as though beckoning her forward, a cord tied tightly around her ankle dragging her onward. In hope. Owen was there—she could feel him tug at the end of the cord. He was there. Somewhere beyond the next bend of the road. The silent road.
A raven’s caw broke the silence, the wind sighing like a dead man. Like a moan. Nora gripped her knife tighter, transported to a different moment when she had heard a similar noise. Feeling the flabby flesh close around her wrist as the stolen golden dagger sank its teeth ever deeper into Ubba Bearkiller’s gut. Hearing his groans as he died. Battle flashes, Diaz had called them.
“Hhhhnnnnnnhhh.”
No, wait.
It wasn’t the wind. Nor memory alone.
On the Wheel Page 23