Stashie glanced at her mother and the girl. “I’m sorry, Mama.”
“We’ll be all right,” the woman said. She slunk along the wall, clinging to the child, until they reached the door. Then they ran outside.
Stashie watched them go. Tarne sheathed his blade.
“They’re gone,” Stashie said. The little tremor had returned to her voice. “What do you want me to do?”
CHAPTER 2
Stashie woke a little after dawn. She huddled on her side, hugging her knees to her chest. The night before she hadn’t so much slept as passed out. Tarne had held her down, sticking his large body in hers, rubbing her, burning her—
—and she hadn’t made a sound. She had promised. Without complaints. Her mother and sister were somewhere in the village, and as long as Stashie cooperated and didn’t complain, they would live.
The pallet scratched her back. She opened her eyes and scanned the room. It looked so different with all four pallets sprawled in the middle of the floor, the table pushed against the wall, and the jars in front of the fireplace. Tarne had insisted on inspecting everything, and he had drunk at least half of one of the wine jars. His mouth had tasted sour.
Stashie spat, and then looked again. Tarne was not inside. She could hear his voice, faint and commanding, outside. He was talking to the men. She rolled off the pallet.
Her entire body throbbed. Tarne had ripped the strand of flesh under her tongue, and had bitten her all over. His large fingers had left bruises on her wrists and hips. She trembled as she stood up. She had never been completely naked before—always dressing half-in and half-out of clothes. Her mother had said that as long as Tylee . . .
Tylee. She closed her eyes, but that only made the picture stronger: his neck spurting blood, his body flailing. Worse, worse than it had been when he had come home from the fighting, his foot swollen and infected, and his screams as his mother and the witch woman cut the foot off. Tylee. She wondered if he was still outside, leaning against the wall, if his spirit had heard her spirit scream when Tarne touched her.
The water jugs were gone. She grabbed the jug Tarne had drunk from before, picked up her torn dress and wiped the jug’s mouth. Then she tilted the jug and drank, wincing as the liquid stung her bruised lips and tongue. The wine tasted sweet, sweeter than she could have imagined, than she could have hoped for. It tasted of the nights before the wars, when she, her mother, and Tylee played with baby Kalie, and talked of the future.
Stashie let the jug stand and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You’re awake.”
Tarne’s voice made her start. She whirled, trying to cover her nakedness with her hands.
He smiled. “You don’t have to hide. I’ve already seen it.”
She didn’t move. He came up beside her, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I let you sleep this morning,” he said. “But from now on I expect you to have breakfast ready for me when I get up.”
She swallowed. He leaned over and kissed her, biting her lower lip. “I also expect you to stay out of the wine unless I tell you that you may have some.”
“How is my mother?” Stashie asked.
Tarne shrugged. “Fine, so far as I could tell. Get dressed. I’ve already eaten with my men, so you won’t have to worry about feeding me until lunch. Clean this place up and then come find me. Is that clear?”
Stashie nodded. He ran a hand through her hair one more time, then left her. She grabbed her dress and looked at it. He had ripped it along the seams and down the middle. She wouldn’t be able to salvage it. She would have to wear something else.
She reached into the clothing sack and took her mother’s good dress. It was loose and hung about her ankles. She had always been smaller than her mother. Stashie cinched it with a piece of rope and straightened the room, placing Tarne’s things in a pile near the door, as if he were going to leave soon. Then she rearranged the furniture, leaving the soiled pallets in the middle of the floor. The blood would never come off the center pallet. She considered rolling it over, but decided to let it stay, symbolic of the night Tarne killed her brother.
The sun was still low in the sky when she finished. She set aside some bread and cheese to break for lunch, then went to the doorway.
The smell hit her first: rich in decay, almost fetid, the stench of blood and feces, and the beginning of something rank. Bodies littered the street all over the village, and she longed to run forward, to see if her family were among them. But she had promised to obey Tarne, and he had promised not to hurt them. He was a soldier, and a soldier was a man of his word.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she looked to her left, and saw Tylee, still slouched against the wall, head half-severed by Tarne’s sword. The shaking started again, and for a moment she couldn’t control it. The night before, she had let her brother’s murderer touch her, use her. All she had to do was reach past him, and grab his second’s knife and stab him in the back. She hadn’t. She had let him live.
And she would let him live tonight too.
There were too many men, too many things that could go wrong. If she wasn’t strong enough to kill him, he would turn on her and destroy the rest of her family. You understand, don’t you, Tylee? she thought, wanting to crouch beside him. Please understand. But Tylee didn’t move. His eyes were swollen, and looked as though they were going to burst out of his face. His skin had become pallid except where the blood had settled along the bottom of his legs.
He wouldn’t have understood. He would have fought the whole way, resisted as best he could—as he had, when faced with Tarne’s sword.
And yet, Tylee had tried to save her.
She had killed him by angering Tarne.
She brought her head down. The street was deserted, except for the bodies and the flies. If someone didn’t clean up, the entire village would smell so bad, everyone would have to leave. Tarne and his men had disappeared. They were off doing—something, she didn’t know what. Someone had to clean up. Tarne had told her to clean up the house. Tylee had always been part of the house. Taking care of him was the least she could do.
Stashie stared at his body for a moment. She couldn’t do the death magicks, and neither could anyone else in the village. The last mage had gone off to defend the pass. Tarne was here, though, so Stashie could assume that he managed to clear the pass. The last troop had to be dead, just as the troop before it—the one that Tylee had survived. Most of the village was dead, although Tarne didn’t know it yet.
She didn’t even want to try the death magicks, for doing them badly meant cursing the soul. Better to leave Tylee unprotected than damn him. She would, if she ever escaped this, find a death mage to perform the ritual for her brother.
She had neither the strength to raise him above the ground, nor the kindling to build a proper fire. The kindling she had left came from the scrub beside the river. The branches were large, but too green. She kept them beside the house in case of emergency. Emergency. Her smile was bitter and she made herself focus on her brother’s body.
The river moved in a trickle, so she couldn’t send him down the mountain. She would have to use the third method of caring for the dead, the least preferred method. She would have to bury him. He would understand that she was not slighting him.
Stashie went back inside and brought out the flat rock her brother had used for digging. She crouched before his body and began to scrape at the sand. The rock dug into her palms. The muscles in her arms pulled and the soreness from the previous night made her back ache. The work would be hard; she might not finish before Tarne returned. But she would tell him that she was doing as he asked—she was cleaning the house.
She dug for the rest of the morning, until the blood ran from the blisters on her hands. The sun shifted and glared on her back. Sweat dripped along her face, and stained her mother’s dress. Beside her, Tylee watched with what seemed like amusement. Stashie had always ridiculed death ceremonies, thinking they had nothing to do wit
h the person who died. Yet Tylee’s body rested against the wall like a broken wine jug. Her mother would grind down the jug, reuse the sand in new jugs. Stashie’s burial of Tylee seemed the same, a way of reusing part of him by placing him in the earth.
The hole had become Tylee-sized, and deep enough to swallow her hand to the wrist by the time she heard pounding of horses’ hooves. She turned, stood, and wiped her palms on her dress. Tarne rode in, followed by three of his men. He looked so big and powerful on his horse. The memory of his suffocating weight made her want to use the knife more than ever.
He waved the men on, and reined up beside her. The horse was breathing heavily and covered with sweat; they must have ridden for miles. Tarne dismounted and looped the horse’s reins to a chink he had made in the wall. His foot narrowly missed Tylee’s body. Stashie flinched.
“What are you doing?” His movements were deliberate. He didn’t face her, but already she knew the tone. Displeasure.
“I-I’m cleaning up as you asked.” She had been planning that sentence all morning. Still, her voice shook.
“I said nothing about the garbage outside.” He kicked Tylee. The body fell, Tylee’s head lolling back. “I left it here for a reason.”
His words angered her, but she stifled the anger, held it back, hoping she could salvage something of this, keep it from hurting the rest of her family.
“Bring me lunch,” he said and grabbed a long piece of kindling from beside the house. He sat down on the rim of her shallow hole and took out his knife. When she didn’t move, he looked up at her. “Now,” he said.
She darted into the house. The coolness felt welcome after the burning of the sun. Her skin throbbed and she knew that, had things been normal, her mother would have yelled at her for remaining in the sun too long. Tylee would have agreed, then put ointment on her, soothing the burning, and little Kalie would have kept Stashie amused until it was time to sleep.
Stashie took the bread and cheese she had set out and placed it on a ceramic platter her mother had made. Then she poured some of the remaining wine into a small misshapen cup that she had made a long time ago, when she had tried to imitate her mother.
Everything in the house had a memory attached to it. And Tarne’s actions were destroying those memories, tainting them with new, awful ones. Even if he left, she would have no home now. Only a place where the ghosts of her past surrounded her, attempting comfort and failing.
She set the wine jar back and hurried outside, afraid that she had been too slow, that Tarne was even more displeased. He was standing when she emerged, leaning on the kindling like Tylee used to lean on his walking stick. Tarne’s eyes sparkled. He acted as if he had been waiting for her.
“Set the food down,” he said.
She did, placing it at the ground by her feet.
“Hold this.” He handed her the kindling. The stick he had chosen had been a long one. He had whittled both ends into sharp points. She clutched the wood, feeling it dig into her already sore palms.
He waited until she was looking at him before he withdrew his sword. “I leave the body of a traitor where other traitors may see it,” Tarne said. “Sometimes that subtle warning isn’t warning enough. So I take more drastic measures.”
With a single, quick movement, he sliced the remaining threads in Tylee’s neck. Stashie jumped back, expecting more blood and finding it even more horrific because there was none. Tylee’s head rolled down the slight incline and landed in the hole, upside down. Tarne extended his hand.
Stashie stared at him, afraid to move. She knew what he wanted. He wanted the kindling. He would put Tylee’s head on it, and display it throughout the village. She couldn’t let him, but she didn’t dare stop him. So she did nothing.
“Hand me the stick,” he said.
She clutched it tighter. “Let me bury him. He didn’t harm you.”
Tarne smiled, but there was no kindness in it. “You are a child, aren’t you? He did harm me. Sometimes words are much stronger than weapons.”
“We have no magic for him,” she said. “No proper way to prepare his body. Isn’t that indignity enough?”
“No,” Tarne said and snatched the stick away. He heaved it over his head, and in a fluid motion, shoved the end of the stick through the opening in Tylee’s neck.
The loud, squishy sound made Stashie want to turn away, but she couldn’t move. Tarne grabbed the lower part of the stick, bracing it with his palms, then lifted it upright. Tylee’s hair moved as if blown by a breeze. His eyes had a startled expression and she wondered if it was new.
Tarne carried the stick to the edge of the road. He used his entire weight to force the pointed end into the ground. Tylee’s head swung for a moment on the pole, then the movement stopped.
Tarne gazed up. “The first one,” he said, with some satisfaction. “Maybe by the time I leave, they will alternate with the torches.”
He came back and picked up the cup at her feet. With two swallows, he finished the wine. He grabbed the plate, broke off a piece of bread and offered it to her.
“I don’t want to eat,” she said. Her voice sounded broken and hoarse.
“You will eat,” he said.
She shook her head.
He set the bread in her hand. “When I say eat, you will eat. You have no choice, girl. You disobeyed me once. Don’t disobey me again.”
Stashie took the piece of bread and swallowed it, although it choked her. Tarne broke the bread into large hunks, and ate them. She chewed each piece that Tarne handed her, swallowing constantly, trying to keep what food she had already eaten down. She couldn’t look at her brother’s head, and she couldn’t look at what remained of his body, lying at Tarne’s feet. So she stared at the plate, watching the bread and cheese become crumbs. All those days of work, all the time her mother had spent preparing the bread, trading for the cheese, only to have it eaten in a single meal. A loaf of bread was supposed to last for days. She wondered if Tarne would consider it disobedience when the time came and she told him the last of the supplies was gone.
When they finished, Stashie said, “My mother and sister, are they—?”
“I grant you no favors.” Tarne stood and brushed the crumbs off his pants. He left the plate on the ground beside Tylee’s legs. “Their welfare is no longer your concern.”
Panic shot through Stashie’s system. “You said you weren’t going to hurt them.”
“You said you weren’t going to disobey me.” Tarne untied the horse from the building. “I expect the hole covered by the time I get back, dinner ready, and you naked on the pallets. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Stashie said.
“Good. The orders are simple. Follow them.” He mounted the horse, pressed his boots into its side, and rode off.
Stashie watched him go. As the horse passed the pole, Tylee’s head moved slightly from side to side, as if saying no. As if he were telling her to disobey Tarne again. She took a deep breath to keep her food down, turned her back on her dead brother, and went inside the house.
***
Stashie waited until Tarne was asleep before rolling off the pallet. She moved silently across the floor and lifted her dress from the sack she had placed it on. She slipped the dress over her head, and allowed the thin sliver of moonlight to guide her to the door.
She had to push gently, careful not to make a sound. Tarne sighed in his sleep and rolled over, but did not wake. Stashie crept out to see if her mother and sister were all right.
The moon was full and round, illuminating the village with the thin light of a rainy day. The bodies looked like grotesque shadows, parodies of the persons who had died. Stashie slipped across the road, watching for movement other than her own. She moved from building to building, peering in window after window. Mostly, she saw Tarne’s men, sleeping on pallets with the village women, much as Tarne slept with her. But none of the women were her mother.
She had walked past most of the buildings when she saw the
tent that had been erected near the river. A light created shadows in the interior. Two of Tarne’s men sat outside it, sleeping from the angle of their heads. She moved sideways across the sand, her bare feet whispering against the ground. The men didn’t look up. When she reached the back of the tent, she peered beneath the small gap between the peg and the ground.
Two candles burned on the table, spreading wax across its surface. The older women and very young children slept on the floor. They huddled together as if for comfort. Stashie stared until she saw her mother and Kalie, leaning on each other in the far corner of the tent. He hadn’t touched them. He probably didn’t even know who they were.
She rolled away from the tent before anyone inside saw her. Then she made her way back, slowly.
The moon’s light had grown brighter. The corpses on the street looked as if they had changed positions. A large shadow covered the center of the road. Stashie followed the shadow to its source, and found herself looking at Tylee’s head, great and angry in the moonlight.
He seemed to be ordering her to take him down, to fight back. But she had no reason to rebel. If she fought Tarne, she would lose what remained of her family. The village she had loved was already gone.
Tylee frowned. Then I have died for nothing, he said. I have wasted my life, trying to protect people like you. Cowards, who don’t know how to protect themselves.
She wanted to deny it, but the image of Tarne sleeping on what had been Tylee’s pallet came back to her. It would have been so easy, so very easy to slip that knife into his back. And if Tarne died, maybe his men would leave. If Tarne didn’t die, they would punish her, but leave her family alone. She had disobeyed Tarne that afternoon, and he hadn’t gone near her mother. He had tortured Stashie with Tylee’s body, but had left her family alone.
We can’t sit by while they take our land, destroy our homes, kill our families, Tylee said. We have to fight back, Stashie. It’s the only way.
Heart Readers Page 2